Cough Syrup

One pint best vinegar. Break into it an egg and leave in, shell and all, over night. In the morning it will all be eaten except the white skin which must be taken out. Then add 1 pound loaf sugar, and for an adult, take a tablespoon three times a day. This is a most excellent remedy for a cough in any stage.

Source: Mrs Owens’ Cook Book and Useful Household Hints, Frances Owens

Thoroughwort Bitters

Make a strong tea of the thoroughwort–strain it, and when cool, put to a couple of quarts of it half a pint of French brandy, the peel of two or three fresh oranges, cut into small bits, and half a dozen bunches of fennel, or smallage seed. The seed and orange peel should be crowded into a bottle, then the tea and brandy turned in. The bottle should be corked tight. The bitters will keep good almost any length of time, and is an excellent remedy for bilious complaints, and can often be taken when the thoroughwort tea will not sit on the stomach. A wine glass of these bitters to a tumbler of water is about the right proportion. It should have a little sugar added to it before drinking it.

Source: The American Housewife

Diarrhoea

A moderately strong tea of blackberry-root. Make it palatable with sugar and cream, and let the child use it as ordinary drink. Or, let the child eat all pure loaf sugar as it will.

Source: The Kansas Home Cook-Book

Lip Salve

Dissolve a small lump of white sugar in a table-spoonful of rosewater, (common water will do, but is not as good.) Mix it with a couple of large spoonsful of sweet oil, a piece of spermaceti, of the size of half a butternut. Simmer the whole well together eight or ten minutes, then turn it into a small box.

Source: The American Housewife

Blackberry and Wine Cordial

It is recommended as a delightful beverage and an infallible specific for diarrhea or ordinary disease of the bowels:

Receipt.- To half a bushel of blackberries well mashed, add a quarter of a pound of allspice, two ounces of cinnamon, two ounces of cloves; pulverize well, mix, and boil slowly until properly done; then strain or squeeze the juice through homespun or flannel, and add to each pint of the juice one pound of loaf sugar; boil again for some time, take it off, and while cooling, add half a gallon of the best Cognac brandy.

Dose.– For an adult, half a gill to a gill; for a child, a teaspoonful or more, according to age.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

Hoarseness

For simple hoarseness, take a fresh egg, beat it and thicken with pulverized sugar. Eat freely of it, and the hoarseness will soon be relieved.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts

Cholera Morbus

Camphor tincture three drops rubbed into a teaspoon sugar, then dissolved in six tablespoons water. Give a spoonful every ten minutes.

Source: The Kansas Home Cook-Book

To destroy Cockroaches, Ants, and other household Vermin

Hellebore, rubbed over with molasses, and put round the places that cockroaches frequent, is a very effectual poison for them. Arsenic, spread on bread and butter, and placed round rat or mouse holes, will soon put a stop to their ravages. Quicksilver and the white of an egg, beat together, and laid with a feather round the crevices of the bedsteads and the sacking, is very effectual in destroying bugs in them. To kill flies, when so numerous as to be troublesome, keep cobalt, wet with spirit, in a large shallow plate. The spirit will attract the flies, and the cobalt will kill them very soon. Black pepper is said to be good to destroy them — it should be mixed, so as to be very strong, with a little cream and sugar. Great care is necessary in using the above poisons, where there are any children, as they are so apt to eat any thing that comes in their way, and these poisons will prove as fatal to them as to vermin, (excepting the pepper.) The flour of sulphur is said to be good to drive ants away, if sprinkled round the places that they frequent. Sage is also good. Weak brine will kill worms in gravel walks, if kept moist with it a week in the spring, and three or four days in the fall.

Source: The American Housewife

Powders for Children

A very excellent carminative powder for flatulent infants may be kept in the house, and employed with advantage whenever the child is in pain or griped, dropping five grains of oil of anise-seed and two of peppermint on half an ounce of lump sugar, and rubbing it in a mortar, with a drachm of magnesia, into a fine powder. A small quantity of this may be given in a little water at any time, and always with benefit.

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

Cough Mixture

Take a whole lemon, cut it in four parts; add to them half a pound of white sugar; put them in half a pint of boiling water, and let boil for ten minutes. When warm, add six cents worth of paregoric to it. Dose : Take half a wineglassful when the cough is troublesome.

Source: Audel’s Household Helps, Hints and Receipts