Cure for Hiccoughs

Lump of sugar saturated with vinegar will usually cure hiccoughs in a child. Drink of water often brings immediate relief. In prolonged cases of hiccoughing, weak, hot coffee with cream and sugar given at frequent intervals has cured the patient.

Source: Civic League Cook Book

Corns

Bind bread soaked in vinegar on the corns day and night and they will come out by the roots.

Source: Civic League Cook Book

Musquito Bites

Salt wetted into a sort of paste, with a little vinegar, and plastered on the bite, will immediately allay the pain; and if not rubbed, no mark will be seen next day. It is well to keep salt and vinegar always in a chamber that is infested with musquitoes[sic]. It is also good for the sting of a wasp or bee; and for the bite of any venomous animal, if applied immediately. It should be left on till it becomes dry, and then renewed.

Source: Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, Eliza Leslie

Thieves’ Vinegar

Take a large handful of lavender blossoms, and the same quantity of sage, mint, rue, wormwood and rosemary. Chop and mix them well. Put them into a jar, with half an ounce of camphor that has been dissolved in a little alcohol, and pour in three quarts of strong clear vinegar. Keep the jar for two or three weeks in the hot sun, and at night plunge it into a box of heated sand. Afterwards strain and bottle the liquid, putting into each bottle a clove of garlic sliced. To have it very clear, after it has been bottled for a week, you should pour it off carefully from the sediment, and filter it through blotting paper. Then wash the bottles, and return the vinegar to them. It should be kept very tightly corked. It is used for sprinkling about in sick-rooms; and also in close damp oppressive weather. Inhaling the odour from a small bottle will frequently prevent faintness in a crowd.

It is best to make it in June.

This vinegar is so called from an old tradition, that during the prevalence of the plague in London the composition was invented by four thieves, who found it a preservative from contagion; and were by that means enabled to remain in the city and exercise their profession to great advantage, after most of the inhabitants had fled.

Source: Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, Eliza Leslie

Molasses Possets

Put into a sauce-pan a pint of the best West India molasses; a tea-spoonful of powdered white ginger; and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter. Set it on hot coals, and simmer it slowly for half an hour; stirring it frequently. Do not let it come to a boil. Then stir in the juice of two lemons, or two table-spoonfuls of vinegar; cover the pan, and let it stand by the fire five minutes longer. This is good for a cold. Some of it may be taken warm at once, and the remainder kept at hand for occasional use.

It is the preparation absurdly called by the common people a stewed quaker.

Half a pint of strained honey mixed cold with the juice of a lemon, and a table-spoonful of sweet oil, is another remedy for a cold; a tea-spoonful or two to be taken whenever the cough is troublesome.

Source: Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, Eliza Leslie

How to make a Stringent Gargle

Put the following ingredients into a very clean earthen pipkin:— Twenty sage leaves, a handful of red rose leaves, and a pint of water; boil these for twenty minutes, then add a gill of vinegar, and two table-spoonfuls of honey; boil again for ten minutes, and strain the gargle through a muslin rag, to be used when cold.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

To Clean a Vinegar Cruet on the Inside

Put into it shot, pebblestones, or beans. Fill it with a strong soap suds, and one teaspoonful of bread soda or ammonia. Let stand an hour, shake well and often. Rinse with clean water.

Source: Things Mother Used To Make, L.M. Gurney

To Clean Brass and Copper

Scrape a little rotten-stone fine, and make into a paste with sweet oil. Rub on with a piece of flannel; let it dry, and polish with a chamois-skin. Copper is cleaned either with vinegar and salt mixed in equal parts, or with oxalic acid. The latter is a deadly poison, and must be treated accordingly.

Source: The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking, H. Campbell

A Cure for Sprains

Bruise thoroughly a handful of sage-leaves, and boil them in a gill of vinegar for ten minutes, or until reduced to half the original quantity; apply this in a folded rag to the part affected, and tie it on securely with a bandage.

Source: A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, C.E. Francatelli

Specific for a Cough

Take equal quantities of camomile flowers, elecampane, life-everlasting, mullen, a few races of ginger, and as much fat lightwood splinters as camomile. Boil to a strong tea; strain it, and add enough honey and sugar mixed in equal quantities; boil down to a syrup; add enough good apple vinegar to give a pleasant acid taste. Pills made of fresh tar, brown sugar, and the yolk of an egg,
are good for a cough. Pills of fresh rosin taken from the pine tree are also good.

Source: Mrs Hill’s New Cook-Book