For the most deadly bites: horehound juice, a tablespoonful three times a day, before meals.
- Take green hoarhound tops and pound them fine; press out the juice, and let the patient drink a table-spoonful three times a day, before breakfast, dinner, and just on going to bed, and apply the pounded herb to the bite as a poultice twice a day. This remedy seldom fails to cure the most deadly bites, and is the standing remedy among the Indians.
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor, 1851. Public domain; transcription unaltered.
The dosing schedule is the joke the book does not know it is making. A rattlesnake bite is an emergency measured in minutes and hours; this proposes a regimen organised around mealtimes.
Horehound does nothing to venom. It is a bitter herb, useful for coughs, and every hour spent applying it is an hour not spent getting antivenom.
Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.
Read the original page →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
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
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