Old School remedies thank Goodness for Google!

     I found a book at a yard sale, well, over the years I have purchased several seriously old booklets at different yard sales.  I was flipping through one called Rare Recipes and Budget Savers As Compiled from the Columns of the Wichita Eagle's HOME TOWN NEWS.  Well, that is a mouthful.  I think I paid a dime for it, brought it home about a month ago and there it sat until this weekend, I decided to clear my desk.  I truly got my ten cents worth out of this booklet once I read it!  I am posting a copy of this booklet available on Ebay, just so you know I am NOT making this stuff up!

       I had to Google Attar of Roses to find it means essential oil of roses.  The method fro extracting the oil was interesting.  Place a one inch deep layer of dry fresh rose petals in a ceramic jar, add a layer of cotton balls about one inch deep.  Cover with olive oil.  Repeat these layers until you fill the jar ending with a layer of cotton on top.  Screw on lid, leave in sun for two weeks. Open jar, use fruit press to squeeze out every drop of oil.  If you have no press, hand squeeze it all, bottle and cap the oil.  

      I found a new liniment: coal oil, turpentine camphor oil and a little whiskey.  Rub on sore muscles.  I admit I had to use the Google search tab quite a bit while reading this booklet.  Apparently, the use of term coal oil in this sense was actually kerosene.  

     Many of the remedies are from pioneer times and the use of cocaine for a migraine is no longer recommended!  Nor, is it a remedy for the post partum blues.  Also, I will probably not use a whole lot of skunk grease, but, I now know how to use it if I ever needed to!
     
     It was amazing the dangerous and hazardous materials available for use.  I found a recipe for cough drops that was also recommended as useful for a cold.  It's ingredients included tincture of squill (Botanical: Urginea scilla ), paregoric ( tincture of opium), ipecac, and tincture of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis plants are found growing in moist to dry woods and thickets).  OH my Sweet Lord!!!  opium, induced vomiting and TWO toxic plant roots!  If it didn't cure you it would stop a cold when your heart stopped!  AND THen you get to go to JAil !!

www.pioneerhandbooks.com

     So, before I go gather the other old booklets, I believe I will read all of them again with a sharpie in my hand, to black out the dopey, dangerous recommendations from the 19th century.  If you would like a book of pioneer remedies of your own to judge. You may go to these site to get your own! 

        

www.littlehouseliving.com 

www.vistabooks.com