Part 5
FOR THE DROPSY.--Make a tea of poke root, sliced fine, one ounce and a half; put this into one pint of white wine, add two tablespoonsful of ground mustard seed, and let it stand twenty-four hours. Drink a wine glass full every morning.
Another: Take half an ounce of Indian hemp, and add one quart of boiling water; simmer down to one pint, and add two ounces of cream tartar, half an ounce of ginger, one tablespoonful of brown sugar. Give the patient one tablespoonful every three hours, and increase if the patient can bear it. Use it moderately as it is powerful.
COMPOSITION.--Take two pounds bayberry bark, one pound ginger, one pound pulverized hemlock bark, one ounce cayenne pepper, one ounce cloves, all pulverized; mix thoroughly and sift. It is particularly useful as a convenient family medicine in sudden colds, febrile attacks, hoarseness, sore throat, coughs, influenza, toothache, pain in the stomach, bowels, or other parts of the body, rheumatism, cold hands and feet, diarrhœa, dysentery, colic, croup, giddiness, hysteria, mumps, jaundice, worms, nervous disorders, and the various affections of the skin.
_Directions._--For a grown persen half a teaspoonful of the powder and add a little loaf sugar, rub them together and add half a pint of boiling water; drink the tea as hot as you can bear it. There is no occasion for swallowing the grounds, as is a common practice, for the strength of the medicine will be extracted by the boiling water, and the sediment can have no other effect than to clog and irritate the stomach. When the tea is taken the patient should be in bed with a warm brick at their feet, or sitting by a fire wrapped in a blanket, to create perspiration.
FOR A SCALD HEAD.--Take of hops and wood soot, four ounces each, and three pints of water; boil down to half a pint, then strain and add four ounces fresh butter; let it simmer till the water is out; use every day. Or, beef’s gall, dried to the consistence of a salve, spread on linen, and let it remain for five days; then make use of the soot ointment.
FOR DEAFNESS.--Take a turnip, wrapped in brown paper, and put it in a bed of hot ashes; when cooked take it out and squeeze out the juice, and put it in bottles. Use by putting three drops on a piece of cotton every other day.
CURE FOR SORE NIPPLES.--Take a large flat turnip, scrape out the heart of it and put into the hollow half an ounce of beeswax, a gill of train oil, and a gill of honey; set it on hot ashes for an hour, when you must pound the turnip and contents until the juice is out. Apply this to the nipples four times a day, which will surely cure.
EYE WATER.--Take fresh eggs and empty out the contents, leaving in each shell a little of the white of the egg, put into each shell ten grains of white vitrol and fill them with rose or rain water; set each shell in warm ashes to simmer for half an hour; strain the water through a piece of fine linen, and pour a gill of rose water in it; keep it in a bottle well corked. This will cure by applying it three or four times a day, and taking care not to catch cold.
CONSUMPTIVE COMPLAINTS AND INFLAMMATION CAUSED BY COLDS IN WOUNDS.--Take yellow pond lily root and boil till the strength is out, then strain and thicken with coarse wheat flour; if yellow lily cannot be had, use slippery elm or basswood bark. Cattail flag is good to make a poultice.
STOMACH TINCTURE.--Take one ounce of gentian root, half an ounce of dried orange peel, one ounce of the inside bark of white pine; put these into one pint of cogniac brandy, and in four days it will be fit for use.
FOR PILES.--Canada thistle, simmered in clear lard.
LIME WATER.--Take half a pound of unslacked lime, put it into two quarts of water, and let it stand twenty-four hours, stirring it two or three times. Take off the clear water, blow the scum aside, and take half glass full two or three times a day; if too strong, add water, or if it heats the stomach take vinegar.
TO REGULATE THE BOWELS.--Take one teaspoonful of castile soap before breakfast, and one teaspoonful after breakfast, for three days, then take gentian bitters.
HOARSENESS.--Nettle roots, powdered fine, and mixed with an equal quantity of molasses; take one tablespoonful night and morning.
INFLAMMATION IN THE EYES.--Put half an ounce of quicksilver in three pints of water, and boil to one pint; then bottle it; make a poultice of this with Indian meal, and apply under the chin; renew it when too dry.
FOR A COUGH.--Take equal parts of moss taken from white oak, white maple and white ash; make a strong tea, and sweeten with honey; this will generally cure. Take half a wine glass full three times a day, and in the night if required.
Another: Smartweed, pulverized fine, mixed with an equal quantity of molasses; take a teaspoonful three times a day.
FOR A FELLON.--Take rock salt, rolled in a cabbage leaf and pulverized, two ounces spirits turpentine; mix and apply.
VOLATILE SALTS.--Take one ounce sal amoniac, two ounces pearlash; powder them separately, then mix together, and moisten with the essence of cinnamon, or spirits of any kind; put it into a bottle and keep well corked. This is good to apply to the nose in case of faintness.
TOOTHACHE DROPS.--Take wild celendine root in powder, or wet a piece of lint with the juice, and apply it to the tooth.
FOR WORMS.--Take dry cobbs and burn them and make a powder; boil them in soft water till the strength is out; strain off the ley, and boil down very strong; give the patient a teaspoonful once an hour for three or four hours. This is very good for worms. Or make a strong tea of sumach berries of which drink a wine glass full. This will do when the patient is first attacked.
BATHING FOR ALL PAINS.--Take three ounces of the oil of lavender, three ounces sulphuric ether, one ounce of alcohol, two drachms of laudanum; mix well together, and rub the afflicted part with a piece of flannel wet with the mixture; sit by a fire and keep it warm, before going to bed.
OX GALL--Is good for the gout. Bathe the parts affected with the gall and warm it in with a hot shovel or brick. It will give prompt relief.
TO RENDER TEETH INSENSIBLE TO PAIN.--Diseased teeth have been rendered insensible to pain by a cement composed of Canada balsam and slacked lime, which is to be inserted in the hollow, or cavity, of the tooth; it will relieve instantly.
A CANCER UNDER THE EYE--Was cured by drinking one quart of tar water daily, and applying a plaster of tar and mutton tallow melted together; this cured a cancer in two months, and of twenty years standing. Or mix black pepper, burned alum and honey, equal parts, and use it as an ointment.
A NEWLY DISCOVERED CURE FOR A POLYPUS.--An elderly lady applied to me for advice, who had been afflicted for a long time with a fleshy excresence, which filled up the passage of her nose. By using the following simple prescription a cure was performed in a few days: Take half an ounce of blood root, finely pulverized and sifted, and one drachm of camomile; mix them together for a sternutatory. A small pinch of this powder is to be snuffed up the nostrils for the polypus of the nose, three times a day. The following wash, or lotion, is to be thrown up the nostrils with a syringe twice a day, until the polypus is removed: Dissolve half an ounce of powdered alum in a gill of brandy, and shake the vial until the alum is dissolved. This is a tried, safe and sure cure for polypus of the nose without the use of instruments, which subjects the patient to extreme pain and is often very dangerous.
ELIXIR PRO.--Take one quart of good spirits, to which add two ounces myrrh; let it stand in the sun four days, then add half an ounce of aloes, one ounce of saffron, and let it stand two days.
ALTERATIVE SYRUP.--Take two pounds sarsaparilla, one pound guaiacum, eleven ounces sassafras, eleven ounces alder flowers; boil together in three quarts of water, pour off, add one pint and a half of spirits and five pounds of sugar. Drink a wine glass full three times a day.
FOR A COUGH.--Take two heads of garlic, a lemon sliced, four ounces licorice, half a pint of liquor, four ounces flax seed, three pints of water, boil down to one quart, and strain; take a tea cup full on going to bed.
RECIPE FOR A COLD.--Take a large teaspoonful of linseed with two penny worth of stick licorice, and a quarter of a pound of sun raisins. Put them in two quarts of soft water; add to it a quarter of a pound of brown sugar candy, powdered and a tablespoonful of white wine vinegar, or lemon juice.
_Note._--The vinegar is to be added only to the quantity you are going immediately to take; for if it be put into the whole, it is liable, in a little time, to grow flat. Drink half a pint on going to bed, and take a little when the cough is troublesome.
This recipe generally cures the worst of colds, in one or two days; and, if taken in time, may be said to be almost an infallible remedy. It is a sovereign balsamic cordial for the lungs, without the opening qualities which endanger fresh colds in going out. It has been known to cure colds which have almost been settled into consumptions, in less than three weeks.
BITE OF A RATTLESNAKE, OR ANY OTHER POISONOUS SNAKE.--It is good, when you expect to be in danger of being bitten by poisonous snakes, to keep a small bag of fine salt in your pocket, so that you may bind it on. As soon as you are bit, cut and scarify in and near the place where the bite is, with a lancet, or sharp pointed knife; this will keep the orifice open, so that the poison may the better be drawn out; then take, if it can be had, one or two of the nubs or balls of the thimble-weed, steep in water, pound it well, put it on the bite and keep it on a quarter or half hour; then see if it has made a blister, and if not, repeat the application until you get one; then take it off, but, in the mean time, take care to have the person chewing the leaves or bark of white ash, and swallow plenty of the juice, but not one drop of water, until the poison is working out; take the leaves of white ash, mountain flax, robin’s plantain roots, tops, and bloodwort, (called by some St. Andrew’s crosswort, and by some quinsy) roots and tops, and snake violet (sometimes called buck-horn plantain) roots and tops, and conicle roots, altogether, or such parts as can be collected in great haste, about a handful of each, and pound all together; then put them into a pot of water, and boil them until very strong, (save some out to drink often and plentifully,) and wash and bathe the part affected with this preparation often, rubbing, stroking and working above, below, and all around, pressing toward the wound; the liquor should be about blood warm; apply on the bite a cabbage leaf, or a smooth plantain leaf, wilted by the fire; apply your herbs and liquor like a poultice, all over the limb or the part affected, and repeat as often as the poultice gets too dry--not forgetting to drink often of the liquor. If the poison doth rage much, give the juice of horehound and brown sugar, to drink. But I tell you again, give no water to drink, and take care to keep the wound open and moving, with the leaves wilted by the fire.
When you want to heal the wound, make an ointment of hog’s lard and ox-weed, green bark of sweet elder, the smooth leaf plantain roots and tops, and anoint the part two or three times a day, or as you find need. After the cure is effected, you ought to physic well, in order to cleanse the blood; and to prevent a return of the sickness and preserve the eye-sight; the patient may have new milk to drink, with other drinks. And when the poison is out of the system, be careful not to drink great draughts of water, but make tea of good things, to warm and sweeten the blood. In this way, I have kept patients from one drop of water, for full nine days. One John Lee, being hit on his feet, had three doctors to attend him, who soon fixed him for his winding-sheet. He had been laid out near two hours, when a man came in and gave him the snake violet and bloodwort juice, in white or sweet wine, half of each, mixed together, and the man recovered and lived.
STOMACH FAINTNESS, SICKNESS AND SWELLING.--Take the ripe berries of spice bush, dry them, and pound them in a mortar as fine as you can; then put them in a good, strong linen bag, press it well, and it will produce a very good oil; then bottle it up for use. You may take it with safety.
A SALVE FOR BRUISES, SCALDS AND WOUNDS.--Take two pounds of fresh hog’s lard, one-half pound each of beeswax and rosin, one pound of good well-cured tobacco, one-quarter pound nightshade and one drachm of deaplemer; stew over a moderate fire about two hours, then strain it clear for use. It is also good for burns.
A SALVE FOR GREEN WOUNDS AND BOILS.--Take the yolk of an egg, and one spoonful each of honey, wheat flour and white pine turpentine; simmer all together; when cold, it is fit for use.
TO MAKE EYE WATER, AND A WASH FOR BRUISES, STABS, OLD SORES, ULCERS, SWELLINGS, EAR ACHES, AND TO REMOVE CANCERS.--Take one quart of rain or river water, made boiling hot, put it into a pewter or earthen basin, and put into it one spoonful of white vitriol and half a spoonful of raw alum, pounded fine, one spoonful of the spirits of wine, half a large thimble full of gum elerne, made fine as can be; let it stand till it is cold, and bottle it up for use.
The way to use it, is to make it as hot as you can bear it, in an earthen vessel, and bathe the place often and well.
TO STOP BLEEDING, AND TO HEAL A FLESH WOUND.--Take a clean linen rag, dry it well by the fire so that it begins to be brown; then put it to the blaze, and let it burn to a good cinder, put it on the wound as hot as you can, bind it on the wound and keep it on till it works loose, and it will stop the blood; if it wants more healing, apply clean lint instead of a plaster, and make a wash of liquor of soap and urine, spikenard, or the like.
FOR THE RHEUMATISM.--Take a small glass bottle full of angle-worms, washed clean, with a rag or paper stopple, and put the bottle into a loaf of bread, and mould it to bake as usual; set it into the oven and bake it well, and after your bread is drawn out of the oven, let it stand till it gets cold; then cut it open, and the worms will make a fine oil; you may strain the oil from the muddy bottom, and anoint the place affected with it. For a drink, put the root and tops of princes pine into brandy, and drink night and morning as you can bear, repeating your anointing as often as required, and keep warm.
ANOTHER--FOR RHEUMATISM, OR PAINFUL SWELLING OF THE JOINTS.--Take a black water turtle, and bruise or pound it to pieces; put it into a pot of water and boil it smartly near two hours; then take it off and let it get cold, and skim off the oil and keep it for use; anoint the place affected hot by the fire, bind it up with flannel cloths, and dress as often as you find need. For drink to cleanse the blood, take a handful of the roots and tops of princes pine, half a handful of horse-radish roots, a pound each of the bark of sweet alder roots, sarsaparilla root, prickly ash bark, black birch bark, garden nettle roots and burdock roots, and half a bushel of good malt or one gallon of molasses, and brew about six gallons of good beer, let it work well, and drink as you find you can bear; keep yourself from wet and cold.
AN EXCELLENT SALVE FOR BURNS AND OTHER SORES.--Take one gallon of good old cider, and steep one pound of good tobacco in it cold for twenty-four hours, then strain and press out all the liquor; you may dry the tobacco, and it will be good to smoke; take your liquor, strain it clean and put into it half a pound of rosin, half a pound of beeswax and half a pound of deer or mutton tallow; stew it over a moderate fire to the consumption of all the cider, and if you find it hard, temper it by adding fresh hog’s lard: fit for use. It is the best kind of salve.
TO MAKE GOOD FAMILY PHYSIC.--Take a large iron pot full of the bark of butternut roots, got in the month of June; fill it up with water, and boil it twelve hours; take out the bark and put in a handful of the roots of smellage, dill, annis-seed, or the like, and boil it again till it begins to be a little thick; then strain it again very clean, and stew it away very moderately, until it is hard enough to form into pills, as you may ascertain by cooling some of it as the rest is boiling; when you find it is sufficiently hard, take it off the fire and put it into a small dish; burn two or three egg shells on the hot coals till they will pound fine enough to go through a coarse sieve, and near three spoonsful of fine flour of brimstone, together, and put it into the physic; mix it all the time while cooling, to prevent the powders from settling. A grown person may take as much as a tablespoonful at night, before going to bed, either made into pills or dissolved in water, or in the morning, fasting; if it does not work down in two hours, take half as much more, and keep repeating until it does work; drink a great plenty of water gruel, made of Indian meal.
AN OINTMENT FOR THE KING’S EVIL.--Take one pound of butter made in May, and take as much of the roots of fresh fox glove (what some call lady-shoe), pound it very fine, and put as much in the butter as will mix; set it in the hot sun thirty days, taking it in evenings, and days when it rains or is very cloudy; after it has had thirty days’ sun, press out the ointment, and annoint the king’s evil. For this purpose, it is said it has no equal; you must physic the blood well to carry it off.
FOR A COUGH OF LONG CONTINUANCE.--Take three or four quarts of wheat bran, boil it in a pailful of water to a strong wort; then take it off the fire, take out near a quart of the wort and set it away to drink; then put your feet into the bran and liquor, and rub, scrape and work the soles of your feet with an old knife as long as the water is warm; then go right into a warm bed and drink the rest of the wort you have saved out; sweat plentifully and so repeat it three or four nights, and you will likely find help in almost any cough; be careful not to get any cold.
SYRUP FOR A COUGH.--Take one or two turnips, slice them very thin, take a pewter or earthen basin and sprinkle it over with brown sugar, then lay on a layer of elecampane roots, sliced or pounded, then a laying of sugar, next of turnips, and so on until the basin is nearly full; set it in an oven, or a warm cellar, a day or a night, and you will have a fine syrup. Take half a gill on going to bed; you may eat the roots also--but, as they open the pores of the body, you ought to be careful not to get cold.
ANOTHER.--Take hoarhound, garden colt’s-foot roots, spikenard roots, and, for weakness, add hartshorn, Solomon’s seal, comfrey and brook liverwort; stew in water till it is strong, then strain off the liquor, and to a quart of the syrup add half a pound of honey or good brown sugar, and a gill of rum; simmer again over the fire half an hour and bottle it up; take as you can bear, night and morning, fasting.
WIND CHOLIC--INDIAN MEDICINE.--Take the bark or buds of boxwood, such as has a large blossom in the spring, much like a peach blossom--the tree is short and scrubby, and bears paleish berries; boil the bark or buds, or both together, in water, and give the person plenty to drink, to break away the wind, and it will quickly give the patient ease.
HARD SWELLING--FOR MAN OR BEAST.--Make an ointment of one pound of the bark of bittersweet, half pound of young and tender mullen leaves, a large handful of the white of hen dung and a handful of wormwood; boil all together in water till the strength is all boiled out; squeeze out the liquor and strain it clean; now add one pound of hog’s lard, stew it till the water is all out, then turn it into a small vessel and keep it for use, to annoint the place swelled; if you find it is not powerful enough, add to a gill of the ointment, one spoonful of the spirits of vitriol, or half a spoonful of the oil of vitriol, well mixed by a hot fire or with a hot iron. If it is a beast you have in hand, the spirits and oil of vitriol may be used with neat’s foot oil for the same purpose, or be put into other ointments for swellings, with safety; it is good for old crusty, hard, scabby sores, to work out hard, dead matter or crusts in sores, for both man or beast, and set the sore to work.
DROPSY.--For persons inclined to dropsy, or stoppage of urine, and swelling in the body, take the roots of one-berry, so called because it bears but one berry in a place, which is large, red, resembling a strawberry; by some it is called Scotch bonnet, because the bud on the top, before the blossom comes, resembles that bonnet; it grows some like a weed, about logs, stone-heaps or old fences; it has a large leaf, which falls off in the fall of the year, and grows again the next spring; some call this dropsy root. Take this root and boil it in water, and drink plenty of it. It is also very good for horses and cattle, if they swell in their bodies, for stoppage of water and great pain, add some rosin to it.
ULCERS, SORES AND HARD SWELLINGS ON THE JOINTS.--If they have been so for many years, take half a pailful of the bark of the red roots of red willow, (found on low, wet land,) scrape it off very fine with a knife; the bark must be red, as you will find some will be red and some not, as both will grow from one tree or bunch of willow bushes; that which is not red will not do at all, and if such large red willow is not to be had, get a small willow which is called rose willow, and grows on dry, hilly land, and sometimes on flat plains, two, three and four feet high, and has a bunch of leaves on the top, much in the form of a rose, from which it takes its name, and it will answer for the same purpose; take the red bark of these roots, as of the other, and boil it very strong in a large pot of water; then take it off the fire, and place the joint over the steam, covered over with a blanket and fermented as long as the liquor is hot; then wash and bathe as long as the liquor is warm, and bind on as much of the bark as you can keep on, and so repeat twice a day; it may be some months before a cure is completed.
In cases where fever sores existed, or the like, and the bone has rotted by the fever, and the scales come out, this treatment has made the greatest number of cures, in such cases, of any I have ever met with, or knew; it is also very good to put about half a brick, well pounded, in the liquor; in using this great remedy, you ought first to physic the blood thoroughly, to throw off the old humors, and make the cure sound and firm; afterwards, use plenty of scabis root, made into a tea, and drink every day, or make a good beer with it; or sometimes take it in powders--about a spoonful.
WORMS IN CHILDREN.--Take the third bark (which is the inner one,) of spotted alder, that bears a small, red berry, scrape off the bark with a knife, and boil half a pound in about one gallon of water, to one quart; then strain it clean, and take out, for a child, about half a pint, and set it away in a bottle; add to the other about half a pint of sweet milk and about half a pint of molasses; simmer these together over the fire a little while, and bottle it up; one day before the full or change of the moon, give the child a third part of that you saved out, and the rest the two next mornings; after that let them drink the syrup.