Flaxseed Lemonade

Pour one quart of boilmg water over four tablespoonfuls of whole flaxseed, and steep three hours. Strain and sweeten to taste, and add the juice of two lemons. Add a little more water if the liquid seems too thick. This is soothing in colds.

Source: The Universal Cookery Book, Gertrude Strohm

Delightful Cough Candy

Break up a cupful of slippery-elm bark, and let it soak for an hour in water poured over it in the measuring-cup. Half fill a cup with flaxseed, and fill up to the brim with water, leaving it to soak the same time as the slippery-elm. When you are ready to make the candy, put one pound and a half of brown sugar in a stew-pan over the fire; pour the water from the slippery-elm and flaxseed over it, straining the last, and stir constantly until it boils and begins to turn back to sugar; then turn it out, and it will break up into crumbly, small pieces. For preachers or teachers who use their voices too much, it will be found an admirable and agreeable medicine, the taste being peculiarly pleasant. It is highly recommended to any one subject to throat affections. The best flavor for it is a little lemon-juice.

Source: The Universal Cookery Book, Gertrude Strohm

Biliousness

Take the juice of one, two or three lemons, according to appetite, in as much ice water as is pleasant to drink, without sugar, before going to bed at night. In the morning, on rising, or at least one-half hour before breakfast, take the juice of one lemon in a glass of water without sugar. The stomach should not be irritated by eating lemons clear, but they should be properly diluted so as not to burn or draw the throat.

Source: The Inglenook Cook Book

Bran Tea

Put a handful of bran in a pint and a half of cold water, boil it for an hour and three-quarters, then strain, and flavour with sugar and lemon juice. This is a very cheap and useful drink in colds, fevers, and restlessness from pain.

Source: Recipes for the Million

Herb Drinks

Balm tea is often much relished by the sick. Sage tea also is good. Balm, sage, and sorrel, mixed with sliced lemon and boiling water poured on, and then sweetened, is a fine drink. Pennyroyal makes a good drink to promote perspiration.

Herb drinks must often be renewed, as they grow insipid by standing.

Source: Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, Catherine Beecher

For A Hoarseness

Sweeten a 1/4 pint of hyssop water with sugar candy, and set it over the fire; when quite hot, stir in the yolk of an egg well beaten, and drink it off; this may be taken night and morning.– Or: put a new laid egg in as much lemon juice as will cover it: let it stand twenty-four hours, and the shell will be dissolved. Break the egg, then take away the skin. Beat it well together, add 2 oz. of brown sugar candy pounded, 1/4 pint of rum, a wine-glassful of salad oil, and beat all well together. A table-spoonful the first in the morning, and the last at night.

Source: The English Housekeeper, Anne Cobbett

Simple Barley Water

Take two ounces and a half of pearl barley, cleanse it, and boil it ten minutes in half a pint of water. Strain out this water and add two quarts of boiling water, and boil it down to one quart. Then strain it, and flavor it with slices of lemon and sugar, or sugar and nutmeg.

This is very acceptable to the sick in fevers.

Source: Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, Catherine Beecher

For A Cold And Cough

To 3 quarts of water, put 1/4 lb. linseed, two pennyworth stick liquorice, and 1/4 lb. sun raisins. Boil it, until the water be reduced half; add a spoonful of rum and of lemon juice. A 1/4 pint at bed time, and in smaller quantities, during the night, if the cough be troublesome.

Source: The English Housekeeper, Anne Cobbett

Syrup for a Cough

Boil 1 oz. balsam of tolu, very gently, two hours, in a quart of water; add 1 lb. white sugar candy, finely beaten, and boil it half an hour longer. Strain through a flannel bag twice; when cold, bottle it. You may add 2 oz. syrup of red poppies, and the same of raspberry vinegar. A spoonful when the cough is troublesome.

Or: 2 oz. honey, 4 table-spoonsful vinegar, 2 oz. syrup white poppies, and 2 oz. gum arabic: boil gently to the consistency of treacle; a tea-spoonful when the cough is troublesome.

Or: 1 table-spoonful treacle, 1 of honey, 1 of vinegar, 15 drops laudanum, and 15 drops peppermint. Simmer together a quarter of an hour. A dessert-spoonful to be taken at going to bed.

Or: mix together in a phial, 2 drachms of compound tincture of benjamin, 6 drachms ethereal spirits of nitre, 3 drachms of compound tincture of camphor, and 5 drachms of oxymel; a tea-spoonful in a wine-glass of warm water, when the cough is troublesome.

Or: mix 1 oz. gum arabic, 1 oz. sugar candy, and the juice of a lemon; pour on it a pint of boiling water; a little when the cough is troublesome.

Source: The English Housekeeper, Anne Cobbett

A Cure for Dropsy

Six lemons, one pound of loaf sugar, one ounce of cream of tartar, one ounce of magnesia, two ounces of parsley seed. Slice the lemons thin, put them and the parsley seed into three quarts of water, boil down to one quart, strain and add the other things to them. Dose, a wine glass three times a day.

Source: The New Galt Cook Book, M. Taylor & F. McNaught