💊 Doctor's Orders
The sickroom menu. Raw beef for the dysenteric, opium for the teething.
34 recipes, worst first.
Opium, Laudanum (antidotes)
The antidote table's advice for opium and laudanum — emetic draught, vinegar and water, “dashing cold water on chest and face, walking up and down for two or three hours.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Meat for Invalids
Raw loin beaten in a marble mortar with sweet and bitter almonds and sugar, into a pulp with “a rosy hue, and a very agreeable taste.” Said to keep “even in summer.”
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
Mercury, Chloride of Calomel
One grain of mercury chloride twice a day as an alterative, four to five as a laxative. The book calls it “a most dangerous medicine” and prints the doses anyway.
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Stimulants for Opium Poisoning
The home first-aid table treats opium poisoning with “cathartics and stimulants, such as coffee, brandy, and strychnine,” while the patient is walked up and down.
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Purgative Pills
Calomel and jalap, ten grains each; opium, a grain and a half; tartar emetic, a grain. “To be taken at once, or divided into pills, if the patient prefer it.”
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
Raw Beef Soup
A pound of chipped raw beef, four ounces of water, four drops of muriatic acid. Twelve hours on ice, strained, served cold. Nothing is ever cooked.
Cooking in Old Créole Days · 1904
Acid, Sulphuric (Diluted)
“Sulphuric acid mixed with 11 times its bulk of water. Used in dyspepsia, also to check sweatings, salivation and diarrhea; also as a gargle.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Gardner (Cholera Remedy &c.)
Equal parts laudanum, rhubarb, double-strength capsicum, camphor and spirits of nitre. “Dose for children, from two to ten drops,” repeated every fifteen minutes.
The Home Cook Book · 1887
The Family Medicine Shelf
“Common, everyday remedies” recommended for the home shelf — mercury chloride, opium tincture and a barbiturate-era hypnotic, filed beside the Epsom salts.
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Children's diarrhea cordial
A teaspoonful every half hour “until the discharge shows the color of the medicine.” The medicine is brandy and opium tincture. The patient is a child.
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
Cough Mixture
“Two ounces of gum arabic, one ounce of paregoric elixir, two ounces of sugar candy, juice of one lemon.” A wineglass morning, noon and night.
The Home Cook Book · 1887
To Prevent Contagion from Eruptive Diseases
Keep sliced raw onions in saucers about the sickroom to absorb the disease, and “as fast as they become discoloured, replace by fresh ones.”
The Home Cook Book · 1887
Cherry Ferri
“Draw 1 ounce of American Cherry Ferri in a hot soda cup, fill cup with hot water, add whipped cream if desired.” Just as fine hot or cold.
The American Soda Book of Receipts and Suggestions, 1905 · 1905
The Whale-Carcass Rheumatism Cure
American whalemen's cure for rheumatism: open the carcass “while the interior still retains some warmth” and put the patient in from the loins down.
Meals Medicinal · 1905
Honey and Tar Cough Candy
Boil horehound down, add honey, lard and “a tablespoonful each of lard and tar,” and boil to a candy. Increase the dose “from a piece the size of a pea to as much as can be relished.”
The Bride's Cook Book · 1918
Hectic Cough (tar-and-port cordial)
Three yolks, a gill of honey and a spoonful of tar stirred into half a pint of port over a slow fire. A teaspoonful before each meal, with cayenne in hot water at bedtime.
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor · 1851
Ammonia Cocktail
“Aromatic Spirits of Ammonia, 2 dashes; Orange Syrup, 1 ounce; Bicarbonate of Soda, ½ teaspoonful.” Add the soda last, stir, serve quickly.
The American Soda Book of Receipts and Suggestions, 1905 · 1905
To Make White Wine Whey
Boil skimmed milk with sherry, lemon juice and “fifteen grains of purified nitre,” let the curd subside, and take it in two doses at bedtime.
The British Cookery Book · 1864
Raw Beef for Dysentery
“Raw beef is excellent in dysentery; it should be minced very fine, and given in doses of a spoonful at a time,” every four hours.
Buckeye Cookery · 1880
Food for Infants, and its Preparation
Infant feeding by starch — arrowroot, bread, baked flour — with proprietary “farinaceous food” pronounced “unquestionably the best aliment that can be given.”
Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery · 1907
Frog Broth and Puree
Frogs' legs and hindquarters simmered with celery, carrot, turnip and leek, then pounded to a purée and served “in a clear state in cups” to invalids.
The Epicurean · 1894
Yolk of Raw Egg, &c. (Dr. Seton)
A prescribed sickroom dose: raw yolk and half a white, sweetened and beaten with warm water, then brandy, whisky or port added. Often taken “well whisked” in wine alone.
The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie · 1909
Eggs (Invalid Cookery)
“An egg broken into a cup of tea, or beaten and mixed with a basin of milk, makes a breakfast more supporting than tea solely.” Yolk and white split into two draughts with wine.
Consolidated Library of Modern Cooking and Household Recipes · 1905
Rattlesnake's Bite
“Take green hoarhound tops and pound them fine; press out the juice,” a tablespoonful three times a day — “before breakfast, dinner, and just on going to bed.”
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor · 1851
French Remedy for Consumption
“One-half pound finely cut up fresh beefsteak; one drachm pulverized charcoal; four ounces pulverized sugar; four ounces rye whisky; one pint boiling water.” Stand overnight, take liquid and meat.
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
Choking remedy
“If you can get it neither up nor down, place two grains of tartar emetic in the patient's mouth.” As it dissolves it will make him “excessively sick,” and the obstruction may shift.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867
Beef Juice
“The best nurses now prepare beef juice”: an inch-thick round, seared two minutes, then pressed. The recipe warns you not to heat the juice, because it would set.
The Butterick Cook Book · 1911
Albumen Beverages
Beat the white to a froth, add orange or lemon juice, strain, sweeten, serve cold. An entire recipe family with no heat step anywhere in it.
The Metropolitan Cook Book · 1918
Albumenized Water
A cup of cold water, the white of one egg, lemon juice and sugar, shaken in a covered jar and stood on ice. Served to exactly the people who can least afford it.
Mrs. Fryer's Loose Leaf Cook Book · 1922
Colds
“A half-teaspoonful of ARM & HAMMER BRAND BICARBONATE OF SODA in a glass of water… will often ward off a cold in its early stages.” And a pound of it in a hot bath for rheumatism.
Book of Valuable Recipes · 1915
Bite of Serpent
Snakebite protocol: “apply fire in some form to the wound, thoroughly and immediately,” follow with ammonia, and give whisky “to intoxication.”
Buckeye Cookery · 1880
Mutton Custard for Bowel Complaints or Consumptive
Fresh mutton suet shredded fine with cinnamon or nutmeg, boiled in a pint of milk, skimmed, and taken warm — half a teacupful, three or four times a day.
The British Cookery Book · 1864
Castor Oil and Sarsaparilla
Soda water, two tablespoonfuls of sarsaparilla syrup, then two tablespoonfuls of castor oil. Fill with soda from the syphon “and drink at once.”
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon · 1919
Lime Water
“One of the most useful agents of household economy,” dosed into children's milk, stirred in to stop milk curdling, and added to bread sponge to stop it souring.
The Home Cook Book · 1887