Food Remedies | Page 9

few days' almost exclusive diet of grapes.
Cream of tartar, a potash salt obtained from the crust formed upon bottles and casks by grape juice when it is undergoing fermentation in the process of becoming wine, is often used as a medicine. It has been cited as an infallible specific in cases of smallpox, but I do not recommend its use, as it probably gets contaminated with other substances during the process of manufacture. In any case its value cannot be compared with the fresh, ripe fruit. I have little doubt but that an exclusive diet of grapes, combined with warmth, proper bathing, and the absence of drugs, would suffice to cure the most malignant case of smallpox.
Sufferers from malaria may use grapes with great benefit. For this purpose the grapes, with the skins and stones, should be well pounded in a mortar and allowed to stand for three hours. The juice should then be strained off and taken. Or persons with good teeth may eat the grapes, including the skins and stones, if they thoroughly macerate the latter.
In the absence of fresh grapes raisin-tea is a restoring and nourishing drink. Dr. Fernie notes that it is of the same proteid value as milk, if made in the proportions given below. It is much more easily digested than milk, and therefore of great use in gastric complaints. Sufferers from chronic gastritis could not do better than make raisin-tea their sole drink, and bananas their only food for a time.
Raisin Tea.
To make raisin-tea, take half a pound of good raisins and wash well, but quickly, in lukewarm water. Cut up roughly and put into the old-fashioned beef-tea jar with a quart of distilled or boiled and filtered rain water. Cook for four hours, or until the liquid is reduced to 1 pint. Scald a fine hair sieve and press through it all except the skins and stones. If desired a little lemon juice may be added.
Gooseberry.
The juice of green gooseberries "cureth all inflammations," while the red gooseberry is good for bilious subjects. But it has been said that gooseberries are not good for melancholy persons.
Gooseberries are an excellent "spring medicine."
Lavender.
It is very much to be regretted that the nerve-soothing vegetable perfumes of our grandmothers have been superseded, for the most part, by the cheap mineral products of the laboratory. Scents really prepared from the flowers that give them their names are expensive to make, and consequently high-priced. The cheap scents are all mineral concoctions, and their use is more or less injurious. A penny-worth of dried lavender flowers in a muslin bag is even cheaper to buy, inoffensive to smell--which is more than can be said of cheap manufactured scents--and possesses medicinal properties.
Lavender flowers were formerly used for their curative virtues in all disorders of the head and nerves.
An oil, prepared by infusing the crushed lavender flowers in olive oil, is recommended for anointing palsied limbs, and at one time a spirit was prepared from lavender flowers which was known as "palsy drops."
A tea made with hot water and lavender tops will relieve the headache that comes from fatigue.
Dr. Fernie advises 1 dessertspoonful per day of pure lavender water for eczema.
The scent of lavender will keep away flies, fleas, and moths.
Lemon.
Lemons are invaluable in cases of gout, malaria, rheumatism, and scurvy. They are also useful in fevers and liver complaints.
I have found the juice of one lemon taken in a little hot water remove dizzy feelings in the head, accompanied by specks and lights dancing before the eyes, consequent upon the liver being out of order, in half an hour.
The juice of a lemon in hot water may be taken night and morning with advantage by sufferers from rheumatism. In the "lemon cure" for gout and rheumatism, the patients begin with one lemon per day and increase the quantity until they arrive at a dozen or more. But I think this is carrying it to excess. Dr. Fernie recommends the juice of one lemon mixed with an equal proportion of hot water, to be taken pretty frequently, in cases of rheumatic fever.
A prescription for malaria, given in the Lancet, is the following: "Take a full-sized lemon, cut it in thin transverse slices, rind and all, boil these down in an earthenware jar containing a pint and a half of water, until the decoction is reduced to half a pint. Let this cool on the window-sill overnight, and drink it off in the morning."
A Florentine doctor discovered that fresh lemon juice will alleviate the pain of cancerous ulceration of the tongue. His patient sucked slices of lemon.
A German doctor found that fresh lemon juice kills the diptheria bacillus, and advises a gargle of diluted lemon juice to diptheric patients. Such a gargle is excellent for sore throat.
Dr. Fernie recommends lemon juice for nervous