Cures, Remedies & Potions
From the Old Quina House, off Seville Square in Pensacola, FL
Collected & Edited by Mary Catherine Smith for the Pensacola Historical Preservation Society
If you choose to try these "remedies", do so at your own risk! I shan't be responsible for your consequences!
For Colds:
Saturate a flannel cloth with a mixture of
camphor, turpentine, kerosene, Mutton suet & beeswax melted together. There is no exact rule for the proportion of each ingredient, only you must not add enough of the beeswax to make the flannel stiff nor enough of the turpentine & kerosene to blister. Saturate a flannel with the mixture & put on the chest. Allow to wear the plaster as long as the cold lasts.
[This was called a SEER CLOTH.]
For Earache:
A bit of pepper rolled in cotton, the whole dipped in alcohol, whiskey, or brandy is an excellent remedy for earache.
For the Ague:
Rx: Bark cloves and Cream Tartar of each
1/2 oz. and take a tsp. full every hour
beginning 3 hours before the fit comes
on. NB
- These three to be powdered &
thoroughly mixed.
Take a nutmeg, cut it in two, roast it in
a pan well greased. Take 1/2 when the
chill begins to come on & a gill of gin.
For Nose Bleed:
A piece of paper 2 inches long rolled up to rest on the tongue & upper jaw.
To Stop Bleeding From A Cut:
Bake a little of the blood & apply.
Cure of Dropsey
Take the milkweed root or chink weed plant, either of them which form a decoction to be drank like tea.
A Great Disculient for Large Breasts & All Swelling:
1/2 an ounce of camphor, add 1 spoonful of spirit, then rub the camphor till it becomes a powder. Put this into 1 gill of T/o Turpentine and 1/2 gill Sweet Oil. Bathe the affected 3 times a day.
Indian Remedy for The Dysentery:
Boil the roots of cat tail flag in milk and let the sick men drink as they will. It has been known to give relief in a few hours when other remedies have failed.
Rx For Cancer - An Old Indian Cure:
Those that have been cured of cancers by spiguet. Proceeds as follows:
Boil the spiguets down to a strong decoction and with it keep the cancer wet and after a short time the cancer has turned black & dropped out.
FITS
Cord the left little finger & draw some blood in a sppoon and mix it with water & make her drink it.
For Fetters Ring Worms, Blotches:
Pine gum plaister sprinkled with sulphur applied to the part.
For Fever & Ague:
1 oz. Crem Tartar, 1 oz. Peruvian Bark, sixty cloves to be made into an electrany and about the size of a nutmeg to be taken every 2 hours during the remainder of the fever.
To Arrest the Hiccough:
Squeeze on the wrist of the right hand with a string on the forefinger & thumb.
For Stiff Joints:
Put angle worms in a bottle and apply a gentle heat until they become like milk or oil and rub the joints.
For Weak Joints:
Take the yolk of an egg and beat it with warm water and rub the weakened part.
Hive Syrup:
Take a Snake Root bruised 8 oz.
Squill Do 8 oz.
Water 8 drops boil together over a slow fire till the water is consumed. Strain off the liquour and then all of strained chosey 4 lbs. Boil all to 16 lbs. or to a consistency of a syrup and add to every pound of this syrup 16 grains tart Emetic that is 1 grain to an ounce. The dose varies from 10 drops to 1 or 2 teaspoonsfull. It operates by purging, vomiting, and sweating. If it ferments, give it a little boil.
For Trachitis, Hives, Croup.
Chronic Rheumatism:
Digitalis Leaves oz i
Gum Tinac ii
Salts of Tartar i
Opium 1/2
Gum Myrrh i
Alloes 1-1/2
Wake Robin 1/2
Balsam Copaiba i
Camphor 1/4
Oil Anis 1/2
Put them in a pint of Holland Gin. 3 wine glasses a day in a bad case. In moderate cases one wine glass a day.
Jaundice:
Put a string of garlic aound the waist & repeat the same every 6 hours till relieved and swalow the scrapings of ivory.
Pectoral Plaster:
Pix Burgundy Oz.11
Emp.Cantharides Oz.11
Gum Camphor Oz.1
Melt the Burgundy Pitch by a gentle heat and when cooling add the blistering salve. Lastly the camphor in powder to be spread on leather.
Used in Asthma, Difficulty of Breathing, Hooping Cough.
Linament For The Joints:
Spirits Turpentine
Neets Foot Oil
Camphor
Rosin
Palpitation of the Hearts:
Take 20 grs. Sugar Lead and 49 grs. of Sulfate of Iron. Put in a chunk in Bottle of water and take a tablespoon night & morning.
For the Pils (Piles):
1/4 T. Sulphur, pour on it 1 quart boiling water. Stir it well and let it remain till cold and bitter and drink a wine glass full 2 or 3 times a day.
Leroy's Purge:
Rx. Turbit 2 oz.
Escammony 4 oz.
Ialap 16 oz.
Brandy 12 gtts
Infuse and expose to gentle heat for 12 hours. Then
Senna 1 Tbs.
Warm water 3 1/2 Tbs.
Sugar 1 1/2 Tbs.
Expose to a gentle heat for 5 hours, then mix and strain.
Syrup of Colchicum or Saffron Meadow:
Take of fresh meadow saffron cut in slices, one ounce purified vinegar, one pint sugar, 2 _______. Macerate the meadow saffron in the vinegar for 2 days. Occasionally, shaking the vipast, then strain the infusion with gentle Erpropion. To the strained infusion - add the sugar and boil a little so as to form a syrup. The Syrup of Colchicum is the best preparation as a diuretic & may be taken from a drachm or two the extent of an ounce of more.
Styptic Powerfull:
Brandy 2 oz. Casteel Soap 2 oz., Potash 1 oz. Scrape the soap fine and dissolve it in Brandy, then add the potash. Use it warm, applying pledgets of lint dipped in it.
Scrofula:
Saturated tincture of Digitalis 30 grams out of a 2 oz. veal, 1/2 grs. Mercury, 3 times a day and a mercurial plaister.
Infallible Remedy for Pneumonia:
Take 6 to 10 onions according to size and chop fine; Put in large spider over a hot fire, then add about the same quantity of rye meal and vinegar to form a thick paste. Stir thoroughly, letting it simmer five or ten minutes. Then put in a cotton bag large enough to cover the lungs and apply to chest as hot as patient can bear. in about ten minutes, change the poultice and thus continue by reheating the poutices.
A Sure Cure for Diptheria:
1 teaspoon of flour of brimstone in wine glass of water. Stir with finger as sulphur does not amalgamate readily with water. On becoming well mixed, use as a gargle. Brimstone kills every species of fungus in a man. Swallow after gargling. In extreme cases, blow sulphur through quill into the throat. After fungus has shrunk, then gargle. If a patient cannot gargle take a live coal, put it on a shovel and sprinkle a spoonful or two of brimstone at a time on it. Let sufferer inhale.
Syrup of Radishes - For Whooping Cough:
Mineral Water
Epsom Salts 4 oz.
Nitre 1 oz.
Common salt 1 oz.
Rust of Iron 1 oz.
To make 10 bottles
Cough Syrup:
Cover 2 ounces of flaxseed with a quart of boiling water, add 1/4 pound of sugar and a pint of strained honey and the juice of 3 lemons.
For Sore Eyes:
1 ounce water
1/2 teaspoon epsom salts
6 drops laudanum
Bathe the eyes several times during the day and bathe them well on going to bed.
For The Itch:
Flowers of Sulphur 4 oz.
Oil of Tar 2 oz.
Carbolic Acid 2 drams
Add to 1 pound pure melted lard. Bathe first with castile soap. Apply every 4 days for three applications.
Typhoid:
Cinnamon tea is a valuable drink in the typhoid district and has power to destroy infections even the scent killing them. It is steeped and taken freely as other teas.
Another Earache Remedy:
Get a small quantity of dried arnica flowers and put them in two small bags. put half pint whiskey in a small sauce pan on the fire. When it is heated, cip one of the bags into it and apply to ear. AS soon as one bag cools and steam stops coming rom it change it for the other bag.
For Drawing Boils to a Head & Blood Poisoning:
Equal parts of goat suet & turpentine out of a tree and mix honey. Bathe the part with 1 teaspoon oil of vitrol in water.
Croup:
Goose grease 2 teaspoons
Vinegar 2 teaspoons
Heat in a glass or teacup (never in tin) and give at once dose. If this doesn't cause vomiting, repeat the dose.
A Sure Cure for Small Pox, Chicken Pox, Measles, Etc.:
Sulfate of Zinc 1 grain
Fox Glove (digitalis) 1 grain
Sugar 1/2 teaspoon
Mix with 2 Tablespoons water and when thoroughly mixed add 4 ounces water. A tablespoon every hour, children half a teaspoon, and the disease will surely disappear in 24 hours.
Pile Cure:
Take 1 tablespoon of pure leaf lard. Place in a clean skillet and melt. Take the white part of a lettuce NOT GREEN. Cut up in lard and let steam till you have all the opium in the lettuce that does the work, the oard being used to form the salve. The whiter the lettuce the better but don't use the green portion - only as a salad for dinner.
Asthma:
Gum Ammoniac 1 1/2 oz.
Squills in Powder 1/2 oz.
Liquorice Ball 2
Digitalis 1 oz.
Balsam Coparbe 1 oz.
Opium 1/2 oz.
Wild Turnip 1
Wake Robin 1
This is to be made into pills with honey or oil of Anise if any is required. Three (3) pills to be taken a day.
Worth Remembering
That a tablespoon of epsom salts taken in a glass of water will remove sick headache.
A salve made by stewing a scraped carrot in butter will cure erysipelas.
Cabbage leaves wilted on a hot stove and bound to feverish sores or swelling will draw out the fever.
Turpentine rubbed daily on a rising will scatter it.
A large raisin cut open and heated laid against an aching tooth will often ease the pain.
A teaspoon of lime-water will usually cure the colic.
A ball of saltpeter moistened in water and touched to a fever blister on its first apearance will speedily effect its cure.