The helping hand : containing a great number of valuable receipts on medical, agricultural, culinary, and miscellaneous subjects : and for cooking well at a trifling cost, making hair restoratives, toilet soaps, dyes, all kinds of cements, hair dyes, domestic wines, coloring, scouring clothes, and hundreds of other receipts for use in every position of life.

Somerset, Phil

Date:: [1872]

Credit: The helping hand : containing a great number of valuable receipts on medical, agricultural, culinary, and miscellaneous subjects : and for cooking well at a trifling cost, making hair restoratives, toilet soaps, dyes, all kinds of cements, hair dyes, domestic wines, coloring, scouring clothes, and hundreds of other receipts for use in every position of life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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$4 quarts of pure soft water ; steep half away ; strain it; add half a pint of molasses, and 4 ounces of good figs, and boil the mixture ten or fifteen minutes. Strain it again. When cold, add 1 pint of Holland gin. Tafcefla'l wineglassf ul three times a day. Felon.—Roast a lump of salt of the size of a walnut wrapped in a cab- bage leaf, and pulverize it. Take the same quantity of shaving soap, and the same of bar soap, and make all into a very smooth salve ; soak the felon in lye; apply the salve; in twenty-four hours, pare down where it looks like breaking, till you open it; put on basilicon salve. Fever and Ague, No. 1.—3 drachms of the best red bark ; 3 half drachms of Venetian treacle (not turpentine) ; 1 half drachm powdered Vir- ginia snakeroot; 3 dessertspoonfuls of lemon juice; 6 dessertspoonfuls of Port wine. Mix all togetner. Dose. Tablespoonf ul three times a day. No. 2.—Half ounce of Peruvian bark ; 20 grains of Virginia snakeroot; 20 grains of salts of wormwood. Mix all together, and divide into three pow- ders. Dissolve one powder in half a tumbler of sherry wine and drink it; then in two hours after take a second powder in the same way ; and in two more hours take the third powder. No. 3.—A positive cure for chills and fever is to drink the juice of one iemon during the dry and thirsty stage, and to rub the whole body with tho juice of another lemon. For a Burn.—Wash in lime water, and put on raw cotton moistened . vrith linseed oil. chii ill ItUth&fy from ftrfj ' -i. v.:.Mf vjf btUi uiV.USX'J l.'.ly ' A OfIT :ih\)t For a Weak Stomach.—Make boiled rye your constant diet, eaten p.s jou would eat rice. Take no other kind of food, till you are satisfied you < an bear it. Drink a tea of white pine bark and slippery elm. ■ Glycerine Ointment.—Heat together i drachm of white wax, and oil of almonds 2 ounces; then add 1 ounce of glycerine. Good for chapped J lands, etc. Headache Pills.—Extract of hyoscyamus, i drachm; extract of strr- nonium, 5 grains; morphine, 2 grains; quinine, 40 grains. Mix with simple syrup into 20 pills ; one pill is a dose for an adult, every two or three hours, until relief is obtained. How to keep a Mustard Plaster Moist.—By adding a little syrup or molasses in mixing a mustard poultice it will keep soft and flexible, and not dry up and become hard and uncomfortable, as when mixed up with water alone. A thin piece of fine cloth should come between the plaster and skin. The strength of the plaster is varied by the addition of more or less flour. Indigestion.—Golden seal, black alder bark, Solomon's seal root, two tablespoonfuls of each, powdered fine; boiling water one quart. Mix, and steep ten hours. Then strain, and take a tablespoonf ul four times a day. Iron Mixture.—Precipitated carbonate of iron, 5 drachms ; extract of tonium, 2 drachms ; balsam Peru, 1 drachm; alcohol, 4 ounces; oil of em-$

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