Cough Mixture

Pour 1 pint vinegar over 1 dozen egg shells, let it stand 24 hours, 1 pound brown sugar, 1/2 pound rock candy, 1 pound honey, pour 2 gills rum over candy, sugar and honey, 1 tablespoon glycerine. Beat whites of 1 dozen eggs and mix all together and strain. Bottle and take 1 dessert spoon three or four times a day.

Source: Two Hundred and Fifty Recipes, Grace Church Sewing Circle

Slippery-Elm Tea

Pour one cup of boiling water upon one teaspoonful of slippery-elm powder or a piece of the bark. When cool, strain, and flavor with lemon-juice and sugar. This is soothing in any inflammation of the mucous membrane.

Source: The Universal Cookery Book, Gertrude Strohm

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

Gargles

For sore and inflamed throat, dissolve 1 dram of alum in 12 oz of water. For ulcerated throat: 1 oz, by measure, of Condy’s fluid in 12 oz of water.

Source: The Complete Household Adviser

Eau Sucré

Dissolve three or four lumps of loaf sugar in a glass of ice-water, and take a teaspoonful every few minutes for a “tickling in the throat,” or a hacking cough. Keep it ice-cold.

A simple, but often an efficacious remedy.

Source: Common Sense in the Household, Marion Harland

For A Cough

Make a strong tea of hoarhound; then strain it, and add half a pound of the best loaf sugar, to a pint of the tea: let it simmer till thick; then bottle it, and take a little two or three times a day.

Source: The Philadelphia Housewife, Mary Hodgson

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

Emetics

To a tumblerful of lukewarm water add either (a) a tablespoonful of salt; or (b) a dessertspoonful of ipecacuanha wine; or (c) a dessertspoonful of mustard. Tickling the back of the throat with the fingers or a feather also has an emetic effect.

Source: The Complete Household Adviser

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

Liverwort Syrup

Make a quart of strong liverwort tea by extracting two sets of herbs in the same water, tie a tea cup of flaxseed in a bag and put with it; keep it covered while drawing; when the strength is all out, strain it on a pound of sugar, and let it boil slowly till it is thick — keeping it covered to prevent the strength from going off, when cold, bottle it, and set the bottle in a cool place while using it. Take a table-spoonful at a time about six times a day. This has been used for a cough with great benefit.

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