Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information Part 30

HOW TO CURE CANCER.--Boil down the inner bark of red and white oak to the consistency of mola.s.ses; apply as a plaster, shifting it once a week; or, burn red-oak bark to ashes; sprinkle it on the sore till it is eaten out; then apply a plaster of tar; or, take garget berries and leaves of stramonium; simmer them together in equal parts of neatsfoot oil and the tops of hemlock; mix well together, and apply it to the parts affected; at the same time make a tea of winter-green (root and branch); put a handful into two quarts of water; add two ounces of sulphur and drink of this tea freely during the day.

CASTOR OIL MIXTURE.--Castor oil, one dessert spoonful; magnesia, one dessert spoonful. Rub together into a paste. By this combination, the taste of the oil is almost entirely concealed, and children take it without opposition. HOW TO DISGUISE CASTOR OIL.--Rub up two drops oil of cinnamon with an ounce of glycerine and add an ounce of castor oil.

Children will take it as a luxury and ask for more.

CASTOR OIL EMULSIONS.--Take castor oil and syrup, each one ounce; the yolk of an egg, and orange flower water, one-half ounce. Mix. This makes a very pleasant emulsion, which is readily taken by adults as well as children. HOW TO CURE CATARRH.--Take the bark of sa.s.safras root, dry and pound it, use it as a snuff, taking two or three pinches a day.

HOW TO CURE CHILBLAINS.--Wash the parts in strong alum water, apply as hot as can be borne.

HOW TO CURE COLD.--Take three cents' worth of liquorice, three of rock candy, three of gum arabic, and put them into a quart of water; simmer them till thoroughly dissolved, then add three cents' worth paregoric, and a like quant.i.ty of antimonial wine.

HOW TO CURE CORNS.--Boil tobacco down to an extract, then mix with it a quant.i.ty of white pine pitch, and apply it to the corn; renew it once a week until the corn disappears.

GOOD COUGH MIXTURE.--Two ounces ammonia mixture; five ounces camphor mixture; one drachm tincture of digitalis (foxglove); one-half ounce each of sweet spirits of nitre and syrup of poppies; two drachms solution of sulphate of morphia. A tablespoonful of this mixture is to be taken four times a day.

2. Tincture of blood-root, one ounce; sulphate of morphia, one and a half grains; tincture of digitalis, one-half ounce; wine of antimony, one-half ounce; oil of wintergreen, ten drops. Mix. Dose from twenty to forty drops twice or three times a day. Excellent for a hard, dry cough.

3. Common sweet cider, boiled down to one-half, makes a most, excellent syrup for colds or coughs for children, is pleasant to the taste, and will keep for a year in a cool cellar. In recovering from

an illness, the system has a craving for some pleasant drink. This is found in cider which is placed on the fire as soon as made, and allowed to come to a boil, then cooled, put in casks, and kept in a cool cellar.

4. Roast a large lemon very carefully without burning; when it is thoroughly hot, cut and squeeze into a cup upon three ounces of sugar candy. Finely powdered: take a spoonful whenever your cough troubles you. It is as good as it is pleasant.

CURE FOR DEAFNESS.--Take ant's eggs and union juice. Mix and drop them into the ear. Drop into the ear, at night, six or eight drops of hot sweet oil.

REMEDIES FOR DIARRHOEA.--1. Take one teaspoonful of salt, the same of good vinegar, and a tablespoonful of water; mix and drink. It acts like a charm on the system, and even one dose will generally cure obstinate cases of diarrhoea, or the first stages of cholera. If the first does not bring complete relief, repeat the dose, as it is quite harmless. 2. The best rhubarb root, pulverized, 1 ounce; peppermint leaf, 1 ounce, capsic.u.m, 1/8 ounce; cover with boiling water and steep thoroughly, strain, and add bicarbonate of potash and essence of cinnamon, of each 1/2 ounce; with brandy (or good whisky); equal in amount to the whole, and loaf sugar, four ounces. Dose--for an adult, 1 or 2 tablespoons; for a child, 1 to 2 teaspoons, from 3 to 6 times per day, until relief is obtained. 3. To half a bushel of blackberries; well mashed, add a quarter of a pound of allspice, 2 ounces of cinnamon, 2 ounces of cloves; pulverize well, mix and boil slowly until properly done; then strain or squeeze the juice through home-spun or flannel, and add to each pint of the juice 1 pound of loaf sugar, boil again for some time, take it off, and while cooling, add half a gallon of the best Cognac brandy.

CURE FOR CHRONIC DIARRHOEA. Rayer recommends the a.s.sociation of cinchona, charcoal and bis.m.u.th in the treatment of chronic diarrhoea, in the following proportions: Subnitrate of bis.m.u.th, one drachm; cinchona, yellow, powdered, one-half drachm; charcoal, vegetable, one drachm. Make twenty powders and take two or three a day during the intervals between meals.

CURES FOR DYSENTERY.--Tincture rhubarb, tincture of capsic.u.m, tincture of camphor, essence of ginger and laudanum, equal parts. Mix; shake well and take from ten to twenty drops every thirty minutes, until relief is obtained. This is a dose for an adult. Half the amount for a child under twelve years of age. 2. Take some b.u.t.ter off the churn, immediately after being churned, just as it is, without being salted or washed: clarify it over the fire like honey. Skim off all the milky particles when melted over a clear fire. Let the patient (if an adult) take two tablespoonfuls of the clarified remainder, twice or thrice within the day. This has never failed to effect a cure, and in many cases it has been almost instantaneous. 3. In diseases of this kind the Indians use the roots and leaves of the blackberry bush--- a decoction of which, in hot water, well boiled down, is taken in doses of a gill before each meal, and before retiring to bed. It is an almost infallible cure. 4. Beat one egg in a teacup; add one tablespoonful of loaf sugar and half a teaspoonful of ground spice; fill the cup with sweet milk. Give the patient one tablespoonful once in ten minutes until relieved. 5. Take one tablespoonful of common salt, and mix it, with two tablespoonfuls of vinegar and pour upon it a half pint of water, either hot or cold (only let it be taken cool.) A wine gla.s.s full of this mixture in the above proportions, taken every half hour, will he found quite efficacious in curing dysentery.

If the stomach be nauseated, a wine-gla.s.s full taken every hour will suffice. For a child, the quant.i.ty should be a teaspoonful of salt and one of vinegar in a teacupful of water.

DROPSY.--Take the leaves of a currant bush and make into tea, drink it.

CURE FOR DRUNKENNESS.--- The following singular means of curing habitual drunkenness is employed by a Russian physician. Dr.

Schreiber, of Brzese Litewski: It consists in confining the drunkard in a room, and in furnishing him at discretion with his favorite spirit diluted with two-thirds of water; as much wine, beer and coffee as he desires, but containing one-third of spirit: all the food--the bread, meat, and the legumes are steeped in spirit and water. The poor devil is continually drunk and dort. On the fifth day of this regime he has an extreme disgust for spirit; he earnestly requests other diet: but his desire must not be yielded to until the poor wretch no longer desires to eat or drink: he is then certainly cured of his penchant for drunkenness. He acquires such a disgust for brandy or other spirits that he is ready to vomit at the very sight of it.

CURE FOR DYSPEPSIA.--1. Take bark of white poplar root, boil it thick, and add a little spirit, and then lay it on the stomach.

2. Take wintergreen and black cherry-tree bark and yellow dock: put into two quarts of water; boil down to three pints; take two or three gla.s.ses a day.

Here are two remedies for dyspepsia, said by those who "have tried them" to be infallible. 1. Eat onions. 2. Take two parts of well-dried and pounded pods of red pepper, mixed with one part of ground mustard, and sift it over everything you eat or drink.

HOW TO CURE EARACHE.--Take a small piece of cotton batting or cotton wool, make a depression in the center with the finger, and then fill it up with as much ground pepper as will rest on a five-cent piece; gather it into a ball and tie it up; dip the ball into sweet oil and insert it in the ear, covering the latter with cotton wool, and use a bandage or cap to retain it in its place. Almost instant relief will be experienced; and the application is so gentle that an infant, will not get injured by it, but experience relief as well as adults. Roast a piece of lean mutton, squeeze out the juice and drop it info the ear as hot as it can be borne. Roast an onion and put into the ear as hot as it can be borne.

HOW TO CURE ERYSIPELAS.--Dissolve five ounces of salt in one pint of good brandy and take two tablespoonfuls three times per day.

CURE FOR INFLAMED EYES.--Pour boiling water on alder flowers, and steep them like tea; when cold, put three or four drops of laudanum into a small gla.s.s of the alder-tea, and let the mixture run into the eyes two or three times a day, and the eyes will become perfectly strong in the course of a week.

CURE FOR WEEPING EYES.--Wash the eyes in chamomile tea night and morning.

EYES, GRANULAR INFLAMMATION.--A prominent oculist says that the contagious Egyptian or granular inflammation of the eyes is spreading throughout the country, and that he has been able in many, and indeed in a majority of cases, to trace the disease to what are commonly called rolling towels. Towels of this kind are generally found in country hotels and the dwellings of the working cla.s.ses, and, being thus used by nearly every one, are made the carriers of one of the most troublesome diseases of the eye. This being the case, it is urgently recommended that the use of these rolling towels be discarded, and thus one of the special vehicles for the spread of a most dangerous disorder of the eyes--one by which thousands of workingmen are annually deprived of their means of support--will no longer exist.

CURE FOR STY IN EYE.--Bathe frequently with warm water. When the sty bursts, use an ointment composed of one part of citron ointment and four of spermaceti, well rubbed together, and smear along the edge of the eye-lid.

CURE FOR FELONS.--1. Stir one-half teaspoonful of water into an ounce of Venice turpentine until the mixture appears like granulated honey.

Wrap a good coating of it around the finger with a cloth. If the felon is only recent, the pain will be removed in six hours.

2. As soon as the part begins to swell, wrap it with a cloth saturated thoroughly with the tincture of lobelia. An old physician says, that he has known this to cure scores of cases, and that it never fails if applied in season.

CURE FOR FEVER AND AGUE.--Take of cloves and cream of tartar each one-half ounce, and one ounce of Peruvian bark. Mix in a small quant.i.ty of tea, and take it on well days, in such quant.i.ties as the stomach will bear.

CURE FOR FEVER SORES.--Take of h.o.a.rhound, balm, sarsaparilla, loaf sugar, aloes, gum camphor, honey, spikenard, spirits of turpentine, each two ounces. Dose, one tablespoonful, three mornings, missing three; and for a wash, make a strong tea of sumach, washing the affected parts frequently, and keeping the bandage well wet.

CURE FOR FITS.--Take of tincture of fox-glove, ten drops at each time twice a day, and increase one drop at each time as long as the stomach will bear it, or it causes a nauseous feeling.

GLYCERINE CREAM.--Receipt for chapped lips: Take of spermaceti, four drachms; white wax, one drachm; oil of almonds, two troy ounces; glycerine, one troy ounce. Melt the spermaceti, wax and oil together, and when cooling stir in glycerine and perfume.

GLYCERINE LOTION.--For softening the skin of the face and hands, especially during the commencement of cold weather, and also for allaying the irritation caused by the razor: Triturate, four and a half grains of cochineal with one and a half fluid ounces of boiling water, adding gradually; then add two and a half fluid ounces of alcohol. Also make an emulsion of eight drops of ottar of roses with thirty grains of gum arabic and eight fluid ounces of water; then add three fluid ounces of glycerine, and ten fluid drachms of quince mucilage. Mix the two liquids.

FLESHWORMS.--These specks, when they exist in any number, are a cause of much unsightliness. They are minute corks, if we may use the term, of coagulated lymp, which close the orifices of some of the pores or exhalent vessels of the skin. On the skin immediately adjacent to them being pressed with the finger nails, these bits of coagulated lymph will come from it in a vermicular form. They are vulgarly called "flesh worms," many persons fancying them to be living creatures.

These may be got rid of and prevented from returning, by washing with tepid water, by proper friction with a towel, and by the application of a little cold cream. The longer these little piles are permitted to remain in the skin the more firmly they become fixed; and after a time, when they lose their moisture they are converted into long bony spines as dense as bristles, and having much of that character.

They are known by the name of spotted achne. With regard to local treatment, the following lotions are calculated to be serviceable: 1.

Distilled rose water, 1 pint; sulphate of zinc, 20 to 60 grains.

Mix. 2. Sulphate of copper, 20 grains; rosewater, 4 ounces; water, 12 ounces. Mix. 3. Oil of sweet almonds, 1 ounce; fluid potash, 1 drachm.

Shake well together and then add rose-water, 1 ounce; pure water, 6 ounces. Mix. The mode of using these remedies is to rub the pimples for some minutes with a rough towel, and then dab them with the lotion. 4. Wash the face twice a day with warm water, and rub dry with a coa.r.s.e towel. Then with a soft towel rub in a lotion made of two ounces of white brandy, one ounce of cologne, and one-half ounce of liquor pota.s.sa.

HOW TO REMOVE FRECKLES.--Freckles; so persistently regular in their annual return, have annoyed the fair s.e.x from time immemorial, and various means have been devised to eradicate them, although thus far with no decidedly satisfactory results. The innumerable remedies in use for the removal of these vexatious intruders, are either simple and harmless washes, such as parsley or horseradish water, solutions of borax, etc., or injurious nostrums, consisting princ.i.p.ally of lead and mercury salts.

If the exact cause of freckles were known, a remedy for them might be found. A chemist in Moravia, observing the bleaching effect of mercurial preparations, inferred that the growth of a local parasitical fungus was the cause of the discoloration of the skin, which extended and ripened its spores in the warmer season. Knowing that sulpho-carbolate of zinc is a deadly enemy to all parasitic vegetation (itself not being otherwise injurious), he applied this salt for the purpose of removing the freckles. The compound consists of two parts of sulpho-carbolate of zinc, twenty-five parts of distilled glycerine, twenty-five parts of rose-water, and five parts of scented alcohol, and is to be applied twice daily for from half an hour to an hour, then washed off with cold water. Protection against the sun by veiling and other means is recommended, and in addition, for persons of pale complexion, some mild preparation of iron.

GRAVEL.--1. Make a strong tea of the low herb called heart's ease, and drink freely. 2. Make of Jacob's ladder a strong tea, and drink freely. 3. Make of bean leaves a strong tea, and drink freely.

WASH FOR THE HAIR.--Castile soap, finely shaved, one teaspoonful; spirits of hartshorn, one drachm; alcohol, five ounces; cologne water and bay rum, in equal quant.i.ties enough to make eight ounces. This should be poured on the head, followed by warm water (soft water); the result will be, on washing, a copious lather and a smarting sensation to the person operated on. Rub this well into the hair. Finally, rinse with warm water, and afterwards with cold water. If the head is very much clogged with dirt, the hair will come out plentifully, but the scalp will become white and perfectly clean.

HAIR RESTORATIVE.--Take of castor oil, six fluid ounces; alcohol, twenty-six fluid ounces. Dissolve. Then add tincture of cantharides (made with strong alcohol), one fluid ounce; essence of jessamine (or other perfume), one and a half fluid ounces.

CURE FOR HEARTBURN.--Sal volatile combined with camphor is a splendid remedy.

SICK HEADACHE.--Take a teaspoonful of powdered charcoal in mola.s.ses every morning, and wash it down with a little tea, or drink half a gla.s.s of raw rum or gin, and drink freely of mayweed tea.

HEADACHE.--Dr. Silvers, of Ohio, in the Philadelphia _Medical and Surgical Reporter_, recommends ergot in headache, especially the nervous or sick headache. He says it will cure a larger proportion of cases than any other remedy. His theory of its action is that it lessens the quant.i.ty of blood in the brain by contracting the muscular fibres of the arterial walls. He gives ten to twenty drops of the fluid extract, repeated every half hour till relief is obtained, or four or five doses used. In other forms of disease, where opium alone is contra-indicated, its bad effects are moderated, he says, by combining it with ergot.

HEADACHE DROPS.--For the cure of nervous, sun, and sick headache, take two quarts of alcohol, three ounces of Castile soap, one ounce camphor, and two ounces ammonia. Bathe forehead and temples.

HIVE SYRUP.--Put one ounce each of squills and seneca snake-root into one pint of water; boil down to one-half and strain. Then add one-half pound of clarified honey containing twelve grains tartrate of antimony. Dose for a child, ten drops to one teaspoonful, according to age. An excellent remedy for croup.

HOW TO CLEAN THE HAIR.--From the too frequent use of oils in the hair, many ladies destroy the tone and color of their tresses. The Hindoos have a way of remedying this. They take a hand basin filled with cold water, and have ready a small quant.i.ty of pea flour. The hair is in the first place submitted to the operation of being washed in cold water, a handful of the pea flour is then applied to the head and rubbed into the hair for ten minutes at least, the servant adding fresh water at short intervals, until it becomes a perfect lather.

The whole head is then washed quite clean with copious supplies of the aqueous fluid, combed, and afterwards rubbed dry by means of coa.r.s.e towels. The hard and soft brush is then resorted to, when the hair will be found to be wholly free from all enc.u.mbering oils and other impurities, and a.s.sume a glossy softness, equal to the most delicate silk. This process tends to preserve the tone and natural color of the hair, which is so frequently destroyed by the too constant use of caustic cosmetics.