Liniments, ointments, cough mixtures and balms….

Every other person seems to be suffering from rotten winter illnesses; colds that won’t go away, chesty coughs, tickly coughs, irritating coughs which last for weeks, feeling feeble, feeling ‘not quite the thing’… it seems to have been a real winter for feeling poorly but not being really ill. Some people have taken to their beds, some people missed Christmas or New Year… There’s no point in going to the doctor, even if you manage to get an appointment they give you nothing…

Looking at the delightful little book by Alison Uttley Recipes From an Old Farmhouse, she has a whole chapter on medicines. her recipes for home-made treatments probably come from way back in the nineteenth century and further back than that. Her family lived in the countryside on top of a hill and the doctor was  not nearby, and even when he visited he would come in his gig, a small carriage driven by his groom. Sometimes a bottle of medicine, wrapped in white paper and sealed with red sealing wax would be left on the stone gate-post, and Alison as a child was fascinated by it.

She gives recipes which might not cure the dreadful colds or coughs doing the rounds, but they might make you feel better! Raspberry vinegar, another cough cure made from liquorice, linseed and twenty-four raisins, a cough mixture made with liquorice again, paregoric, aniseed and oil of peppermint, another one made from lemons, salad oil and honey – sounds more like a salad dressing! Liniment to be rubbed on, linseed tea for sore throats, egg flip for invalids, treacle posset for a cough, chicken broth for practically everything, beef tea for recuperation and Dr Broster’s lemon water…