"The White House Cookbook": Health Suggestions, Part Three

You can find even more incorrect health suggestions---including how to cure felons---after the jump!

{Part One, Part Two}

TO CURE A STING OF A BEE OR WASP

Bind on common baking soda, dampened with water. Or mix common earth with water to about the consistency of mud.

{Ed. Well, actually this one works. Because this is what my mom used on us when we got stung as kids. So it's not ALL incorrect. Just most of it.}

TO CURE EARACHE

Take a bit of cotton batting, put on it a pinch of black pepper, gather it up and tie it, dip it in sweet oil, and insert it in the ear; put a flannel bandage over the head to keep it warm; it often gives immediate relief.

Tobacco smoke, puffed into the ear, has often been effectual.

Another remedy: Take equal parts tincture of opium and glycerine. Mix and from a warm teaspoon drop two or three drops into the ear; stop tight with cotton, and repeat every hour or two. If matter should form in the ear, make a suds with castile soap and warm water, about 100 degrees F., or a little more than milk warm, and have some person inject it into the ear while you hold that side of your head the lowest. If it does not heal in due time, inject a little carbolic acid and water in the proportion of one drachm of the acid to one pint of warm water each time after using the suds.

CROUP

Croup, it is said, can be cured in one minute, and the remedy is simply alum and sugar. Take a knife or grater and shave off in small particles about a teaspoonful of alum; then mix it with twice its amount of sugar, to make it palatable, and administer it as quickly as possible. Almost instantaneous relief will follow. Turpentine is said to be an excellent remedy for croup. Saturate a piece of flannel and apply it to the chest and throat, and take inwardly three or four drops on a lump of sugar.

Another remedy.---Give a teaspoonful of ipecacuanha wine every few minutes, until free vomiting is excited.

Another recipe said to be most reliable: Take two ounces of the wine of ipecac, hive syrup four ounces, tincture of bloodroot two ounces. Mix it well.

Dose for a child one year old, five to ten drops; two years, eight to twelve drops; three years, twelve to fifteen drops; four years, fifteen to twenty drops; five years, twenty to twenty-five drops, and older children in proportion to age. Repeat as often as shall be necessary to procure relief. If it is thought best to produce vomiting, repeat the dose ever ten or fifteen minutes for a few doses.

BURNS AND SCALDS

A piece of cotton wadding, spread with butter or sweet oil, and bound on the burn instantly, will draw out the pain without leaving a scar; also a handful of flour, bound on instantly, will prevent blistering. The object is to entirely exclude the air from the part affected. Some use common baking soda, dry or wet, often giving instant relief, withdrawing the heat and pain. Another valuable remedy is to beat the yellow of an egg into linseed oil, and apply it with a feather on the injured part frequently. It will afford ready relief and heals with great rapidity. Some recommend the white part of the egg, which is very cooling and soothing, and soon allays the smarting pain. It is the exposure of the part coming in contact with the air that gives the extreme discomfort experiences from ordinary afflictions of this kind, and anything which excludes air and prevents inflammation is the thing to be at once applied.

TO STOP THE FLOW OF BLOOD

For a slight cut there is nothing better to control the hemorrhage than common unglazed brown wrapping paper, such as is used by marketmen and grocers; a piece to be bound over the wound. A handful of flour bound on the cut. Cobwebs and brown sugar, pressend on like lint. When the blood ceases to flow, apply arnica or laudanum.

When an artery is cut the red blood spurts out at each pulsation. Press the thumb firmly over the artery neary the wound, and on the side toward the heart. Press hard enough to stop the bleeding, and wait till a physician comes. The wounded person is often able to do this himself, if he has the requisite knowledge.

GRAVEL*

Unto a pint of water put two ounces of bicarbonate of soda. Take two tablespoonfuls in the early forenoon, and the same toward night; also drink freely of water through the day. Inflammation of the kidsneys has successfully been treated with large doses of lime-water.

Persons trouble with kidney difficulty should abstain from sugar and things that are converted into sugar in digestion, such as starchy food and sweet vegetables.

*I'm thinking this is referring to a kidney stone, but I could be wrong.

SORE THROAT

Everybody has a cure for this trouble, but simple remedies appear to be most effectual. Salt and water is used by many people as a gargle, but a little alum and honey dissolved in sage tea is better. An application of cloths wrung out of hot water and applied to the neck, changing as often as they begin to cool, has the most potency for removing inflammation of anything we ever tried. It should be kept up for a number of hours; during the evening is usually the most convenient time for applying this remedy.

Cut slices of salt pork or fat back, simmer a few minutes in hot vinegar, and apply to throat as hot as possible. When this is taken off as the throat is relieved, put around a bandage of soft flannel. A gargle of equal parts of borax and alum, dissolved in water, is also excellent. To be used frequently.

Camphorated oil is an excellent lotion for sore throat, sore chest, aching limbs, etc. For a gargle for sore throat, put a pinch of chlorate of potash in a glass of water. Gargle the throat twice a day, or oftener, if necessary.

WHOOPING COUGH

Two level tablespoonfuls of powdered alum, two-thirds of a cupful of brown sugar, dissolved in two quarts of water; bottle and put in a dark closet where it is cool.

For a child one year old, a teaspoonful three times a day on an empty stomach. For a child two years old, two teaspoonfuls for a dose. For a child five years old, a tablespoonful. The state of the bowels must be attended to, and the doses repeated accordingly. No other medicine to be taken, except an emetic, at first, if desireable. Except in the case of an infant, a milk diet is to be avoided.

DIARRHOEA

Take tincture of Jamaica ginger one ounce, tincture of rhubarb one ounce, tincture of opium half ounce, tincture of cardamom one and one half ounces, tincture of kino one ounce. Mix. Dose for an adult, half to one teaspoonful, repeated every two to four hours; and for children, one year old, five drops; two years olf, five to ten drops; three years old, ten to twelve drops, and older children in proportion to age.

FOR CONSTIPATION

One or two figs eaten fasting is sufficient for some and they are especially good in the case of children, as there is no trouble in getting them to take them. A spoonful of wheaten bran in a glass of water is a simple remedy, and quite effective, taken half an hour before breakfast; fruit eaten raw; partake largely of laxative food; exercise in the open air; drink freely of cold water during the day, etc. It is impossible to give many of the numerous treatments in so short a space, suffice it to say that the general character of our diet and experience is such as to assure us that at least one-quarter of the food that we swallow is intended by nautre to be evacuated from the system; and if it is not, it is again absorbed into the system, poisoning the blood and producing much suffering and permanent disease. The evacuation of the bowels daily, and above all, regularly, is therefore all important to aid this form of disorder.

RELIEF FROM ASTHMA

Sufferers from asthma should get a muskrat skin and wear it over their lungs with the fur side next to the body. It will bring certain relief.

Or soak blotting paper in saltpetre water, then dry, buring at night in the patient's bedroom.

Another excellent recipe: Take powdered liquorice root, powdered elecampane root, powdered anise-seed, each one drachm, powdered ipecac ten grains, powdered lobelia ten grains; add sufficient amount of tar to form into pills of ordinary size. Take three or four pills on going to bed. An excellent remedy for asthma or shortness of breath.

RECIPES FOR FELONS*

Take common rock salt, as used for salting down pork or beef, dry in an oven, then pound it fine and mix with spirits of turpentine in equal parts; put it in a rag and wrap it around the parts affected; as it gets dry, put on more, and in twenty-four hours you are cured. The felon will be dead.

Or purchase the herb of stramonium at the druggist's; steep it and bind it on a felon; as soon as cold, put on new, warm herbs. It will soon kill it, in a few hours at least.

Or saturate a bit of grated wild turnip, the size of a bean, with spirits of turpentine, and apply it to the affected part. It relieves the pain at once; in twelve hours, there will be a hole to the bone, and the felon destroyed; then apply a healing salve, and the finger is well.

Another Way to Cure a Felon: Fill a tumbler with equal parts of fine salt and ice; mix well. Sink the finger in the centre, allow it to remain until it is nearly frozen and numb; then withdraw it and when sensation is restored, renew the operation four or five times, when it will be found the disease is destroyed. This must be done before pus is formed.

A simple remedy for felons, relieving pain at once, no poulticing, no cutting, no "holes to the bone," no necessity for healing salve, but simple oil of cedar applied a few times at the commencement of the felon, and the work is done.

*No, we're not talking about lawbreakers here, but rather, "an acute and painful inflammation of the deeper tissues of a finger or toe, usually near the nail; a form of whitlow" according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd. Ed. Unabridged. But it's kind of fun to read it like we're talking about actual lawbreakers, no? High Comedy, that.

Posted by Kathy at January 30, 2006 01:17 AM | TrackBack