Poultices on boils - hot bread or onion and sugar.
These are some of the remedies and cures that I can remember being used to cure illnesses and accidents.
- Comfrey leaves crushed for healing scratches and cuts on elbows and knees, or Witch Hazel.
- Nettle stings were cured by rubbing dock leaves on the sting.
- Barley Water for settling upset stomachs and period pains
- Eggnog for colds – beaten egg in milk and nutmeg, heated and sweetened to taste.
- Dandelion and burdock for constipation (and Beecham’s Pills)
- Elderberry wine for a tonic after illness (for adults)
- Parrish’s Chemical Food for children, after measles, whooping cough, chickenpox, diphtheria and scarlet fever – we got them all before penicillin came out in 1962. My son’s pneumonia was treated that year, and it saved his life. 1000ccs injected altogether, in a huge syringe, by Alexandria nurses coming in twice a day.
- Poultices on boils – hot bread or onion and sugar
- Oils and butter used for bruises
- Rubbing camphorated oil or goose grease for winter coughs
- Olive oil and cod liver oil taken by spoonful’s at school
- Breathing in hot tar fumes, for babies with chest colds
- Rubbing gums with oil of cloves for toothache
- Brimstone and treacle (powdered sulphur) was given out regularly to keep the blood clean
- Parsley in boiling water cured headaches and nervous troubles