Household Remedies for Common Ills

The inexpensive every-day remedies our grandmothers used to swear by are finally achieving recognition as safe and effective alternatives to expensive and powerful prescription drugs. Of course, as with all self- medication (holistic or otherwise), please consult your health-care practitioner before use.

Some of the ailments and cures of the time included:

Warts

The intractable wart or verruca was eliminated by soaking in a rich purple solution of a few crystals of potassium permanganate until stained brown and covering with a plaster for a fortnight. When the plaster was removed, the dead wart or verruca lifted away, leaving a small crater of pink, healthy flesh.

Swollen joints

Painful inflammations and arthritic swellings were relieved by Epsom salts, magnesium sulphate, a tablespoon in a bath, or a teaspoon in a pint of hot water used as a hot poultice and even drunk in acute cases.

Small cuts and burns

Comfrey leaves, known with good reason as knitbone ,were boiled and used as a poultice or eaten in brown bread to promote rapid healing of cuts, burns, sprains and even broken bones.

Eliminating the signs of aging

Vinegar was another cure-all, particularly cider vinegar, used a hair conditioner, a bleach for age-spots, a cure for insect stings and bites or mixed with olive oil for sunburn.

Other home cures included ingredients cobbled together from the larder.

• Olive oil on its own, massaged into the skin, prevented stretch marks in pregnancy.
• Shaken in equal quantities with raspberry vinegar (made by soaking raspberries in vinegar) and trickled down the throat, it cured persistent coughs, and was especially useful for small children, allowing them to sleep and get well.
• Sage leaves were boiled in water with sugar to make a syrup for sore throats, an astingent lotion or hair tonic and the popular saying was, “Why grow old when there is sage in the garden?” Modern research has shown more than a grain of truth in this as it has a stimulating effect on the hormone system.
• Celery, too, was eaten to help menopausal problems with garlic to detoxify the blood.
• Boiled onions were eaten for chest complaints and parsley or barley water for cystitis.
• Thyme was boiled to make a mouthwash that cured bleeding gums. The active ingredient, thymol, is reproduced by pharmaceutical companies for the same purpose.
• Alum was used in an astringent wash for mouth ulcers and “toothbrushes” were made from well-chewed ends of oak twigs, the tannin from them firming gums, whilst cloves and bay leaves were chewed to ease toothache.
• A few sandwiches of Feverfew leaves, eaten over a month on brown bread to avoid blistering the delicate membranes of the mouth, soon cured migraines: permanently.
• Bicarbonate of soda, mixed to a paste with water was applied to burns and rashes, or drunk in milk, one teaspoon to pint to stop allergic reactions.
• Fennel seeds were chewed for indigestion or boiled to make “gripewater” to soothe babies’ colic.
• Simple salt, Sodium chloride, was used in a weak solution to bathe and cleanse wounds, soak burns and cure heat-stroke.
• Plums and pears were used for slimming and strawberries to whiten the teeth.

But the most useful fruit of all was the English apple, proving the old adage, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, as it is now recommended without restraint for its powerful antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and flavanoids that act against infection and cancers and help to balance blood salt and sugar and keep down blood pressure.

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