Elder Tea

Make a strong tea of elder-flowers, either fresh or dried. Sweeten with honey. This tea is to be drunk as hot as possible ,after the person is warm in bed; it produces a strong perspiration, and a slight cold or cough yields to it immediately; but the more stubborn requires two or three repetitions. Used in Russia. This is an excellent remedy for colds attended with feverish symptoms and sore throat.

Source: The Universal Cookery Book, Gertrude Strohm

For A Sore Throat or Mouth

Make a sage tea by boiling some sage leaves; when strong, add honey and some alum or borax. Gargle the throat with this often through the day.

Source: The Philadelphia Housewife, Mary Hodgson

Herb Teas

Herb teas are made by infusing the dried or green leaves and stalks in boiling water, and letting them stand until cold. Sweeten to taste.

Sage tea, sweetened with honey, is good for a sore throat, used as a gargle, with a small bit of alum dissolved in it.

Catnip tea is the best panacea for infant ills, in the way of cold and colic, known to nurses.

Pennyroyal tea will often avert the unpleasant consequences of a sudden check of perspiration, or the evils induced by ladies’ thin shoes.

Chamomile and gentian teas are excellent tonics taken either cold or hot.

The tea made from blackberry-root is said to be good for summer disorders. That from green strawberry leaves is an admirable and soothing wash for a cankered mouth.

Tea of parsley-root scraped and steeped in boiling water, taken warm, will often cure strangury and kindred affections, as will that made from dried pumpkin-seed.

Tansy and rue teas are useful in cases of colic, as are fennel seeds steeped in brandy.

A tea of damask-rose leaves, dry or fresh, will usually subdue any simple case of summer complaint in infants.

Mint tea, made from the green leaves, crushed in cold or hot water and sweetened, is palatable and healing to the stomach and bowels.

Source: Common Sense in the Household, Marion Harland

Cough Mixture

5 oz treacle
6 oz honey
18 tablespoonfuls of vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoonfuls ipecacuanha wine

Put the vinegar, treacle and honey into a jar, and stand it in a saucepan of boiling water; stir until dissolved. Add the wine and bottle the mixture, keeping it well corked.

Dose: One dessertspoonful every three or four hours.

Source: Household Management, E. Stoddard Eckford & M.S. Fitzgerald

To Clean Teeth

Pulverized charcoal mixed with honey, is very good to cleanse teeth, and make them white. A little Peruvian bark put in a phial with lime water is excellent to use occasionally by those that have offensive teeth; and tincture of myrrh mixed with a little water, may be used with advantage, to harden the gums. A little Peruvian bark put in the teeth just before going to bed, and washed out in the morning, is an excellent preservative of teeth. It is very important for parents to insist on children cleaning their teeth, at least, it is well for them to begin before they lose their first set, as it makes them last longer, and fixes the habit, which is of great importance.

Source: Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers, Elizabeth E. Lea

Feuchtwanger’s Tooth Paste

Powdered myrrh, two ounces; burnt alum, one ounce; cream tartar, one ounce; cuttlefish bone, four ounces: drop lake, two ounces; honey, half a gallon; mix.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Cough Compound

For the cure of coughs, colds, asthma, whooping cough and all diseases of the lungs; One spoonful of common tar, three spoonfuls of honey, the yolk of three hen’s eggs, and half a pint of wine; beat the tar, eggs and honey well together with a knife, and bottle for use. A teaspoonful every morning, noon and night, before eating.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

Whooping Cough

Mix a quarter of a pound of ground elecampane root in half a pint of strained honey and half a pint of water. Put them in a glazed earthen pot, and place it in a stone oven, with half the heat
required to bake bread. Let it bake until about the consistency of strained honey, and take it out. Administer in doses of a teaspoonful before each meal, to a child; if an adult, double the dose.

Source: Our Knowledge Box, ed. G. Blackie

To Kill A Canker

Take 2 spoonfulls of honey and one spoonfull of treacle and half as much rock allum as the quantity of a wallnut beat to fine powder and boyle these together over a cheafen dish of coles till it be pretty thick then take it off and let it coole then anoint the cankers with a cloth tyed upon a stick the oftner you anoint it the better twill be you must keep stiring it as long as it doth boyle, it will be like a sirrup when tis cold.

Source: A Book of Simples, H.W. Lewer

For a Sore Throat

Take tops of rosemary fennell sage marygolds with the black middles sinkfoins of each a like quantity a good handfull altogether. a little cammomile boyle it in a quart of ale till tis very strong of the herbs then strain it and sweeten with honey or Sugar, you may boyle a piece of gold or a gold Ring if you please in it.

Source: A Book of Simples, H.W. Lewer