NUTRITIVE DRINKS

927. _The best Method of obtaining pure Soft Water for Medicinal Purposes, without distilling it._--Place an earthen pan in the fields, at a considerable distance from the smoke of any town, to catch the rain as it falls. People living in the country, can easily save this clean, pure rain-water. Set it for an hour in a cool cellar, or put ice into it, and it is the most reviving drink for a thirsty invalid.

928. _Toast and Water._--Toast thin slices of bread on both sides carefully; then pour cold water over the bread and cover it tight for one hour; or use boiling water, and let it cool.

929. _Waters for cooling Draughts of Preserved or Fresh Fruits--Apple Water, Lemon Water, &c._--Pour boiling water on the preserved or fresh fruits, sliced; or squeeze out the juice, boil it with sugar, and add water.

930. _Barley Water._--Take pearl barley, two ounces; wash it, till it be freed from dust, in cold water: afterwards boil it in a quart of water for a _few_ minutes, strain off the liquor, and throw it away. Then boil it in four pints and a half of water, until it be reduced one half.

931. _Laxative Whey._--Take of the dried buds of the damask rose, one ounce; rennet whey, one quart. Let them stand together twelve hours, then strain off the liquor, and add of crystals of tartar, and white sugar, a suitable proportion, to render it more active, and at the same time more palatable.

932. _Wine Whey._--Wine whey is a cooling and safe drink in fevers. Set half a pint of sweet milk at the fire, pour in one glass of wine, and let it remain perfectly still, till it curdles; when the curds settle, strain it, and let it cool. It should not get more than blood-warm. A spoonful of rennet-water hastens the operation. Make palatable with loaf-sugar and nutmeg, if the patient can bear it.

933. _Lemon Syrup, for a Cough._--To a pint and a half of water, add two large poppy-heads, and two large lemons. Boil them till they are soft, press the lemons into the water, strain the liquor, and add half a drachm of saffron, and half a pound of brown sugar-candy, pounded. Boil all together till the sugar-candy is dissolved; stir the whole till you perceive it will jelly; strain it a second time, and take the seeds from the poppies.

934. _Turnip Syrup, for a Cold or Affection of the Lungs._--Roast twelve or more fine turnips in an apple roaster, press the juice from them, and add sugar-candy to your taste. Take a tea-cupful at night and in the morning.

935. _Rose Gargle._--Take of red rose-buds, dried, half an ounce; boiling water, two pints; diluted vitriolic acid, three drachms; mix these together, macerate for half an hour, and draw off the liquor. Sweeten with an ounce of honey.

936. _Detergent Gargle._--Borax powder, two drachms; rose-water, six ounces; honey of roses, one ounce. Mix together. To be used in the thrush.

937. _Common Gargle._--Honey-water, seven ounces; honey of roses, six drachms; vinegar, half an ounce; tincture of myrrh, two drachms. Mix these together.

938. _Starch Injection._--Take of the jelly of starch, four ounces; linseed oil, half an ounce. Mix them over a gentle heat, and add forty drops of tincture of opium. To be used in alvine fluxes, to allay the irritation which occasions constant tenesmus.

939. _Spermaceti Ointment._--Take of spermaceti, half an ounce; white wax, two ounces; olive oil, four ounces. Melt them together over a slow fire, and keep stirring till cold.

940. _Elder-flower Ointment._--Gather the buds or earliest flowers of the elder-bush; simmer these in fresh butter, or sweet lard; it makes a healing and cooling ointment for the skin, in cutaneous diseases.

941. _Elder-flower Poultice._--A poultice of elder-flower tea and biscuit, is good as a preventive to mortification.

942. _White-bean Poultice._--Nothing is so good to take down swellings, as a soft poultice of stewed white beans, put on in a thin muslin bag, and renewed every hour or two.

A FEW SIMPLE MIXTURES, &c.

943. _Squill Mixture._--Take of the milk of ammoniacum, four ounces; syrup of squills, three ounces; mix them together. Dose, two large spoonsful every sixth hour. It is efficacious in coughs, asthma, and oppression on the chest.

944. _Chalk Mixture._--Take of prepared chalk, one ounce; double refined sugar, six drachms; gum arabic, in powder, one ounce; water, two pints. Mix them together.

945. _Camphor Mixture._--Take of camphor, one drachm; rectified spirit of wine, a few drops. Rub them together. Add half an ounce of double refined sugar and one pint of boiling distilled, or rain water. When cold, strain off the liquor.

946. _Infusion of Senna._--Take of senna leaves, one ounce and a half; ginger, in powder, one drachm; of boiling distilled, or rain water, one pint. Macerate for an hour. When cold, strain off the liquor.

947. _Cordial Julep._--Take of peppermint water, four ounces; pimento water, two ounces; compound spirit of ammonia, tincture of castor, of each two drachms. Mix them together. Dose, two large spoonsful.

948. _Mucilage of Quince Seed._--Take of quince seeds, one drachm; rain or distilled water, half a pint. Boil over a gentle fire, until the liquor becomes thick and viscid.

949. _Lime Water._--Take of quick lime, eight ounces; rain or distilled water, twelve pints. Suffer them to stand together one hour, then decant the liquor.

950. _Alum Whey._--Take of alum, two drachms; cow's milk, one pint. Boil them together, until the curd be formed; then strain off the liquor, and add spirit of nutmeg, two ounces; syrup of cloves, one ounce.

It is employed with advantage in diabetes, in uterine and other fluxes.

951. _Whortleberries._--Whortleberries, commonly called huckleberries, dried, are a useful medicine for children. Made into tea, and sweetened with molasses, they are very beneficial, when the system is in a restricted state, and the digestive powers out of order.

952. _Blackberries._--Blackberries are extremely useful, in cases of dysentery. To eat the berries is very healthy; tea, made of the roots and leaves is beneficial; and a syrup made of the berries is still better. Blackberries have sometimes effected a cure when physicians despaired.

953. _Method of causing Children to cut their Teeth easily._--Feed them with an ivory spoon and boat--to be made thick, round, and smooth at the edges. Ivory being of the same hardness and texture as the jaws and tender teeth, the gums are not hurt or injured, but, when they are thus pressed, facilitate the teeth in their progress; whereas, the silver implements, being of a hard texture, and the edges made thin, bruise and wound the gums, and make a hard seam; so that the teeth cannot make their way direct, and, if they do cut, come irregularly; so that the operation of lancing is frequently absolutely necessary, which, of course, must prejudice the teeth, as some are exposed before the time they are fit to cut.

By this method, fevers, convulsions, &c., owing to the teeth being not able to find their way through the hard seam, may be prevented. It must be often observed, that children cry much when feeding, as if ill, or disgusted with their food; whereas it is frequently owing to quite the contrary; for, being hungry, and over eager to take their food, they press hard, through eagerness, on the boat and spoon, which, being sharp, bruises and cuts the gums, and consequently causes great pain, which, by the ivory implements, will be prevented. Those who cannot afford ivory, may have horn or wood, or even pewter is greatly preferable to silver, provided the edges are made thick, round, and smooth. The wooden sort, unless they are kept very sweet and clean, on that very account, are the least eligible, and should be made, however, of box, or such hard and close-textured wood as is the least liable to be tainted by the milky food.

954. _Rules for the Preservation of the Teeth and Gums._--The teeth are bones, thinly covered over with a fine enamel, and this enamel is more or less substantial in different persons. Whenever this enamel is worn through by too coarse a powder, or too frequently cleaning the teeth, or eaten through by a scorbutic humor in the gums, the tooth cannot remain long sound, any more than a filbert-kernel can, when it has been penetrated by a worm.

The teeth, therefore, are to be cleaned, but with great precaution; for, if you wear the enamel off faster by cleaning the outside than nature supplies it within, your teeth will suffer more by this method, than perhaps by a total neglect.

955. _Stammering._--Impediments in the speech may be cured, where there is no mal-formation of the organs of articulation, by perseverance, for three or four months, in the simple remedy of reading aloud, with the teeth closed, for at least two hours in the course of each day.

956. _Of Preservers, and Rules for the Preservation of Sight._--Though it may be impossible to prevent the absolute decay of sight, whether arising from age, partial disease, or illness, yet, by prudence and good management, its natural failure may certainly be retarded, and the general habits of the eyes strengthened, which good purposes will be promoted by a proper attention to the following maxims:--

1. Never sit for any length of time in absolute gloom, or exposed to a blaze of light. The reasons on which this rule is founded, prove the impropriety of going hastily from one extreme to the other, whether of darkness or of light, and show us that a southern aspect is improper for those whose sight is weak and tender.

2. Avoid reading small print.

3. Never read in the dark; nor, if the eyes be disordered, by candle-light. Happy those who learn this lesson betimes, and begin to preserve their sight before they are reminded by pain of the necessity of sparing them. The frivolous attention to a quarter of an hour in the evening, has cost numbers the perfect and comfortable use of their eyes for many years; the mischief is effected imperceptibly--the consequences are inevitable.

4. The eye should not be permitted to dwell on glaring objects, more particularly on first waking in the morning; the sun should not, of course, be suffered to shine in the room at that time, and a moderate quantity of light only be admitted. It is easy to see that, for the same reasons, the furniture of a bed should be neither altogether of a white or red color; indeed, those whose eyes are weak, would find considerable advantage in having green for the furniture of their bed-chamber. Nature confirms the propriety of the advice given in this rule; for the light of the day comes on by slow degrees, and green is the universal color she presents to our eyes.

5. The long-sighted should accustom themselves to read with rather less light, and somewhat nearer to the eye than what they naturally like; while those that are short-sighted, should rather use themselves to read with the book as far off as possible: by this means, both would improve and strengthen their sight; while a contrary course will increase its natural imperfections.

There is nothing which preserves the sight longer than always using, both in reading and writing, that moderate degree of light which is best suited to the eye: too little, strains them--too great a quantity, dazzles and confounds them. The eyes are less hurt by the want of light, than by the excess of it: too little light never does any harm, unless they are strained by efforts to see objects to which the degree of light is inadequate; but too great a quantity has, by its own power, destroyed the sight. Thus, many have brought on themselves a cataract, by frequently looking at the sun or a fire; others have lost their sight by being brought too suddenly from an extreme of darkness into the blaze of day. How dangerous the looking on bright, luminous objects, is to the sight, is evident from its effects in those countries which are covered, the greater part of the year, with snow, where blindness is exceedingly frequent, and where the traveller is obliged to cover his eyes with crape, to prevent the dangerous and often sudden effects of too much light: even the untutored savage tries to avoid the danger, by framing a little wooden case for his eyes, with only two narrow slits. A momentary gaze at the sun will, for a time, unfit the eyes for vision, and render them insensible to impressions of a milder nature.

957. _The Feet_--Should be washed in cold water every morning, and wiped very dry. Stockings, if too small, cripple the feet as surely as small shoes. Always be careful to give the foot room enough, and you will be rarely troubled with corns. When the toe-nails have a tendency to turn in, so as to be painful, the nail should always be kept scraped _very thin_, and as near the flesh as possible. As soon as the corner of the nail can be raised up out of the flesh, it should be kept from again entering, by putting a tuft of fine lint under it.

958. _For Sore Feet._--The thin white skin which comes from suet, is excellent to bind upon the feet, for chilblains. Rubbing with Castile soap, and afterwards with honey, is likewise highly recommended.

959. _A Vapor-Bath at home._--Place _strong_ sticks across a tub of water, at the boiling-point, and sit upon them, entirely enveloped in a blanket, feet and all. The steam from the water will be a vapor-bath. Some people put herbs into the water. Steam-baths are excellent for severe colds, and for some disorders in the bowels. They should not be taken without the advice of an experienced nurse or physician. Great care should be taken not to renew the cold after; it would be doubly dangerous.