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Volume VIII, No. 1, Fall 1980 |
OLD TIME CURES
Compiled by Mary Schmalstig and Mike King
In years past, when it was an all day trip and a day's pay to get to the local doctor, home cures
were a vital necessity to have in the event of minor illness and injury.
A remedy for RHEUMATISM is to bury a bottle with a little sugar water in it in an ant hill deep enough that ants can walk over it and fall in. When the bottle is one-third full of ants, remove it from the hill, fill it with whiskey and let it stand for a week. Take the mixture three times a day.
Four preparations put in the ear to relieve an EARACHE are: fresh warm urine; sweet oil; a pinch of pepper rolled in cotton saturated in sweet oil; and a misture of equal parts whiskey and boric acid.
For BOILS soak bread with milk and place on boil.
Paint iodine on a RINGWORM with a feather and soon it will disappear.
To get rid of a WART scratch the wart with a piece of glass, let it bleed on the glass and throw it over your shoulder.
Fill a quart jar with cedar twigs and branches, excluding needles. Add a 2 ounce bottle of wintergreen oil, 2 bars of camphor gun and 1 cup salt. Then fill the jar with fuel oil or kerosene. Let set for two or three weeks, shaking it twice a week. Drain the liquid into another jar. Rub on the aching area two or three times a day. This linament is good for SORE THROAT, ACHING MUSCLES, ARTHRITIS and as a BUG REPELLANT.
To prepare a powder to stop BLEEDING, take green bark off of any tree in the springtime. Dry it in strips and pound it to a powder. Then just sprinkle it on the cut.
To draw out a SPLINTER, bandage a piece of chewed butter bread to the injury.
If you have SOMETHING IN YOUR EYE, put a flaxseed in the eye upon going to bed. By morning the eye will have become lubricated and the foreign matter removed.
Drink a mixture of ground wild garlic onions in hot milk, or drink a strong tea made of blood root to cure WORMS.
To relieve HEARTBURN mash a live hardwood charcoal about the size of a half dollar and when cool enough, swallow it.
For a SORE THROAT, gargle vinegar and water every hour. Spit out the first gargle and swallow the second one. Another cure is to make a hot tea and add honey with beeswax. The wax will coat your throat and protect it against cold weather.
Teas made of sage (spiced with a little marjoran), wild cherry roots, dewberry roots, cameline or linden blossoms are good for a COLD.
Mix equal parts of skunk oil and quinine and rub on chest for relief from a CHEST COLD.
Inhale the fumes of a peppermint weed in hot water for CONGESTION.
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Copyright © 1981 BITTERSWEET, INC.
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