Chilblains

We give a few household remedies for the cure of these disagreeable companions. 1. Take half an ounce of white wax, one ounce of ox-marrow, two ounces of lard; melt slowly over a fire in a pipkin, and mix them well together; then strain through a linen cloth. 2. Before going to bed spread the ointment on the parts affected, feet or hands, taking care to wrap them up well. 3. Lemon juice rubbed on the inflamed parts is said to stop the itching. 4. A sliced onion dipped in salt has the same effect, but is apt to make the feet tender. 5. When the chilblains are broken, a little warm vinegar, or tincture of myrrh, is an excellent thing to bathe the wound and keep it clean. 6. Another useful remedy is a bread poultice, at bedtime, and in the morning apply a little resin ointment spread on a piece of lint or old linen.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

Slippery-Elm Bark Tea

Break the bark into bits, pour boiling water over it, cover and let it infuse until cold. Sweeten, ice, and take for summer disorders, or add lemon juice and drink for a bad cold.

Source: The White House Cookbook, F.L. Gillette

To Soften The Hands

To soften the hands: One can have the hands in soap-suds with soft soap without injury to the skin if the hands are dipped in vinegar or lemon juice immediately after. The acids destroy the corrosive effects of the alkali, and make the hands soft and white. Indian meal and vinegar or lemon juice used on hands where roughened by cold or labor will heal and soften them. Rub the hands in this, then wash off thoroughly and rub in glycerine. Those who suffer from chapped hands will find this comforting.

Source: The White House Cookbook, F.L. Gillette

Cure for Ringworm

Wash the part affected with a little lemon juice; then rub in with the finger a little indigo which has been bruised in a mortar. Do this gently about twice a day.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

For Morphew, or Freckles, and to clear the Skin

Take the Blood of any Fowl or Beast, and wipe your Face all over with it every night when you go to bed for a fortnight together, and the next day wash it all off with White Wine, and white Sugar Candy, and sometimes hold your face over the smoke of Brimstone for a while, and shut your eyes, if you add the Juice of a Limon to the white Wine, it will be the better.

Source: The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet, Hannah Wolley

Ingredient: Apple

It is hardly possible to take up any newspaper or magazine now a days without happening on advertisements of patent medicines whose chief recommendation is that they “contain phosphorus.” They are generally very expensive, but the reader is assured that they are worth ten times the price asked on account of their wonderful properties as nerve and brain foods. The proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties and effects he knows absolutely nothing. How much simpler, cheaper, and more enjoyable to eat apples!

The apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit or vegetable. For this reason it is an invaluable nerve and brain food. Sufferers from nerve and brain exhaustion should eat at least two apples at the beginning of each meal. At the same time they should avoid tea and coffee, and supply their place with barley water or bran tea flavoured with lemon juice, or even apple tea.

Apples are also invaluable to sufferers from the stone or calculus. It has been observed that in cider countries where the natural unsweetened cider is the common beverage, cases of stone are practically unknown. Food-reformers do not deduce from this that the drinking of cider is to be recommended, but that even better results may be obtained from eating the fresh, ripe fruit.

Apples periodically appear upon the tables of carnivorous feeders in the form of apple sauce. This accompanies bilious dishes like roast pork and roast goose. The cook who set this fashion was evidently acquainted with the action of the fruit upon the liver. All sufferers from sluggish livers should eat apples.

Apples will afford much relief to sufferers from gout. The malic acid contained in them neutralises the chalky matter which causes the gouty patient’s sufferings.

Apples, when eaten ripe and without the addition of sugar, diminish acidity in the stomach. Certain vegetable salts are converted into alkaline carbonates, and thus correct the acidity.

An old remedy for weak or inflamed eyes is an apple poultice. I am told that in Lancashire they use rotten apples for this purpose, but personally I should prefer them sound.

A good remedy for a sore or relaxed throat is to take a raw ripe apple and scrape it to a fine pulp with a silver teaspoon. Eat this pulp by the spoonful, very slowly, holding it against the back of the throat as long as possible before swallowing.

A diet consisting chiefly of apples has been found an excellent cure for inebriety. Health and strength may be fully maintained upon fine wholemeal unleavened bread, pure dairy or nut butter, and apples.

Apple water or apple tea is an excellent drink for fever patients.

Apples possess tonic properties and provoke appetite for food. Hence the old-fashioned custom of eating an apple before dinner.

Apple Tea

The following are two good recipes for apple tea:– (1) Take 2 sound apples, wash, but do not peel, and cut into thin slices. Add some strips of lemon rind. Pour on 1 pint of boiling water (distilled). Strain when cold. (2) Bake 2 apples. Pour over them 1 pint boiling water. Strain when cold.

Source: Food Remedies: Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses, Florence Daniel

Cleopatra’s Freckle Balm

A splendid article. Venice soap, one ounce; lemon juice, half ounce; oil of bitter almonds, quarter ounce; deliquidated oil of tartar, quarter ounce; oil of rhodium, three drops. Dissolve the soap in the lemon juice, then add the two oils, and put the whole in the sun till it acquires the consistency of ointment, and then add the oil rhodium. Anoint the freckly face at night with this balm, and wash in the morning with pure water.

Source: The Ladies’ Book Of Useful Information

Lemon Cream for Sunburn and Freckles

Put two spoonfuls of sweet cream into half a pint of new milk, squeeze into it the juice of a lemon, add half a glass of genuine French brandy, a little alum and loaf sugar; boil the whole, skim it well, and when cool it is fit for use.

Source: The Ladies’ Book Of Useful Information

Freckles

Freckles, or the round or oval-shaped yellowish or brownish-yellow spots, resembling stains, common on the face and the backs of the hands of persons with a fair and delicate skin who are much exposed to the direct rays of the sun in hot weather, are of little importance in themselves, and have nothing to do with the general health. Ladies who desire to remove them may have recourse to the frequent application of dilute spirit, or lemon juice, or a lotion formed by adding acetic, hydrochloric, nitric, or sulphuric acid, or liquor of potassa, to water, until it is just strong enough to slightly prick the tongue. One part of good Jamaica rum to two parts of lemon juice or weak vinegar is a good form of lotion for the purpose. The effect of all these lotions is increased by the addition of a little glycerine.

The preceding are also occasionally called “common freckles,” “summer freckles,” and “sun freckles.” In some cases they are very persistent, and resist all attempts to remove them while the exposure that produces them is continued. Their appearance may be prevented by the greater use of the veil, parasol or sunshade, or avoidance of exposure to the sun during the heat of the day.

Another variety, popularly known as cold freckles, occur at all seasons of the year, and usually depend on disordered health or some disturbance of the natural functions of the skin. Here the only external application that proves useful is the solution of bichloride of mercury and glycerine, or Gowland’s lotion.

Source: The Ladies’ Book Of Useful Information