Health Care

Home Remedies: Internal

We were fortunate enough to find a collection of home remedies, scattered through a bundle of recipes. A few of these are below - but we cannot recommend that you try them at home!

Remedy for choking.
Break an egg into a teacup and swallow it whole. It removes the most difficult obstructions.

The page with the choking remedy also contained two recipes for invalids.

The following two cough remedies both contain opium derivatives: laudanum and paregoric. Paregoric was made of powdered opium, camphor and glycerine; laudanum was a stronger compound of opium.

Syrup of squills was made from the bulbs of Urginea maritima and was used as an expectorant. Tincture of Tolu was derived from the tree Myroxylon Toluifera and was also used as an expectorant. Sal volatile is more commonly known as smelling salts.

For a cough

Three table spoonfuls of Treacle, three of vinegar, and sixty drops of Laudanum for a young person, if an aged person, add twenty more, take at going to Bed two tea-spoonfuls, and again in the morning fasting.

Recipe for a cough

equal parts

Two teaspoonfuls to be taken three times a day in a little cold water. The dose may be taken oftener if the cough is very troublesome.

Whooping cough, a more serious ailment, required stronger measures.

As always, indigestion was occasionally a problem:

For indigestion
Half teaspoonful Sal Volatile
do do Bi-Carbonate soda
Half tumbler of water at Bed-time

This remedy for toothache will at least take your mind off the pain . . .

Remedy for the Tooth ache
Equal parts of Chloroform and Oil put on cotton wool, & put into the ear.
We suppose a few drops of each -

Dropsy, according to the Harcourt Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology, is "an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the tissues or in a body cavity".

Cure for Dropsy

Take half a teacupful of blackberry jam - pour on it three wineglass fuls of boiling water - stir it well and drink the liquor off it during the day. Continue every day until the patient is better.

More home remedies - for rheumatism, chilblains, sprains, burns and corns - are on the next page. There was even a cure for cancer and a testimonial for a healer.

Many thanks to http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/eclectic/main.html for the searchable transcriptions of classic herbal texts.