Period Toddies and Medicine

donna

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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May 12, 2010
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Now Florida but always a Kentuckian
diane suggested a thread on Toddies and Medicines of this era. I will start out with three old mountain remedies.

Tonic for colds

Mix 1 teaspoon of molasses for each teaspoon of sulphur. Give one teaspoon to a child with a cold after mixing.

Whopping Cough Syrup

1/2 pound flax seed
1 cup granulated sugar
6 lemons (juice)
1/2 pound honey

Put flax seed in bag; pour over it 1 1/2 pints of water. Let simmer down to 1/2 the amount. Remove from the fire and add other ingedients while still hot. Dose: Give any amount as often as needed. Half of recipe makes enough for one pint.

According to author of this recipe, her mother and grandmother gave this to her and the other children who had whooping cough or bad colds.

From: "Mountain Makin's in the Smokies".

For Infants' Colds:

Roast an onion wrapped in a wet cloth on hot ashes until soft. Peeling the outside off and mashing them, apply on a cloth to the hollow of the child's feet.

Another mountain remedy.
 
Mustard Plaster

Mom used to make mustard plasters for our chest colds or anything like that. She would mix dry mustard, like Coleman's, with flour and warm water and add a finely minced small raw onion. She'd put that into an old t-shirt and then on us. She'd watch it, too, because it got warm and needed to be moved some as it would burn. It really did help, too.
 
Here are a couple of cures from "Confederate Receipt Book", 1861.

"To Relieve Asthma:

Take the leaves of the stramonium (or Jamestown weed) dried in the shade, saturated with a pretty strong solution of salt petre, and smoke it so as to inhale the fumes. It may strangle at first if taken too freely, but it will loosen the phlegm in the lungs. The leaves should be gathered before frost.

For Sick Headache:

One teaspoon of pulverized charcoal and one-third of a teaspoonful of soda mixed in very warm water.

Cure For Toothache:

Powdered alum will not only relieve the toothache, but prevent the decay of the tooth. Salt may advantageouly be mixed with the alum."
 
It is said that Hot Apple Toddy was George Armstrong Custer's favorite drink.

Here is recipe for an old Toddy made Kentucky style.

Apple Toddy

6 apples, peeled and cored
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
cinnamon, powdered
2 cups boiling water
sugar to taste
nutmeg, freshly grated
1 pint bourbon whiskey

Pare and core the apples. Place them in a baking dish and pour over them a syrup made of sugar and water. Dust the apples with cinnamon and bake until done, basting frequently. This takes about 1 hour. Remove apples and juice from stove and mash in bottom of a silver or china punch bowl. Pour over the apples boiling water, sugar to taste, and whiskey. Grate nutmeg over this and ladle into cups. Serve at once with crullers or rosettes.

From: "Out of Kentucky Kitchens", Marion Flexner
 
Roaming around the 'net, I discovered this tasty-looking little gem. I do not know what arrack is but think it might be something tasting like anise. This is very similar to Donna's Apple Toddy posted above with some interesting variations!

Harry Heth is mostly known for accidentally starting the battle of Gettysburg, and for rather famously telling off Sherman, who was at the same dinner. He ribbed the old Confederate general pretty hard and Heth exclaimed, "Now see here, Sherman! If there are two men on this green earth who should get down on their knees and thank God for raising up the rebels, it is Grant and Sherman. If not for the rebellion, you would be teaching school in a Louisiana swamp and Grant would be tanning bad leather in Galena!" "That is so, old chap," replied Sherman. "That is so!"

So, here is his concoction!

Harry Heth's Apple Toddy

“For 1 gallon, bake well and crisp 8 well flavored apples of medium size. When cool, place in a bowl. Mix 1 qt. of brandy, 1 pt. of arrack, 1 pt. of maraschino; pour the mixture over the apples and add 2 qts. water. Sweeten to taste, grating a little nutmeg. Stir well, but try not to break the apples.”
Jacquieine Harrison Smith and Sue Mason Maury Halsey, Famous Old Receipts Used A Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South, Contributed by Descendants. Philadelphia: John C. Winston and Co., 1906.
 
I gotta try one or two of these toddies. This has been sinus week for me. Got really wacked bad with sinus and sore throat. Soooo prevelant in this mid-west region. I like the Tenn recipe. May not do a dang thing for the sinus and throat but I wont feel any discomfort or pain! pissssst... I can score some White Lightning in under a half hour. I connected.
 
Milk Lemonade 1861 and 1862 from "Civil War Recipes"
Receipts from the pages of Godey's Lady's Book.

This is an unusual recipe but very tasty iced or hot like a toddy.

Dissolve six ounces of loaf-sugar in a pint of boiling water, and mix with them a quarter pint of lemon-juice, and the same quantity of sherry; then add three=quarters of a pint of cold milk, stir the whole well together, and pass it through a jelly-bag till clear.
 
Here are a couple of cures from "Confederate Receipt Book", 1861.

"To Relieve Asthma:

Take the leaves of the stramonium (or Jamestown weed) dried in the shade, saturated with a pretty strong solution of salt petre, and smoke it so as to inhale the fumes. It may strangle at first if taken too freely, but it will loosen the phlegm in the lungs. The leaves should be gathered before frost.

For Sick Headache:

One teaspoon of pulverized charcoal and one-third of a teaspoonful of soda mixed in very warm water.

Cure For Toothache:

Powdered alum will not only relieve the toothache, but prevent the decay of the tooth. Salt may advantageouly be mixed with the alum."
I wonder if Jamestown weed was the same as I grew up with, although we called it jimson weed. A more learned neighbor called it mexican hemp.
 
There's another old Tennessee cold remedy a little modernized - peppermint schnapps and white lightning with a little honey and water. That's a version of the old toddy, I imagine. (Although I think white lightning might cure anything - at least for a while!)

OMG. Might not help the next day's hangover!

Daddy preferred Jim Beam with a little lemon and honey--heated. :smile: He really had to talk fast or be really sick to get my teetotaling mom to give in! I think his one bottle of Beam lasted all my life!
 
My grandfather on my dad's side used to cut an onion in half and put one half under each arm in his armpit when he was getting a cold. Swore it got rid of the cold. I don't know if there's any truth to it--I think maybe he just smelled so bad like warm onion after awhile that nobody wanted to be near him!

However, whenever I start to feel coldish, I eat lots of garlic and onion, and drink echinacea tea, and that often works to stop a cold in it's tracks for me. And a shot of something before bed definitely helps!
 
Onions actually have more vitamin C than oranges. My favorite admiral, Nelson, used to pick up onions instead of limes and got in trouble for it - scurvy crew there! But he said the disease was much less and the men liked the onions, which covered a multitude of sins in their rancid food - the lime juice they disliked so much it had to be put in their rum. They'd drink anything if it was in the rum!
 
Well.....yeah. And your point is? :rofl: Those Jamaicans have it right. Rum, mon.

When we visited Veracruz, Mexico, I was surprised by the amazing variety of the rums lined up along the liquor store's wall! Every shade you could think of, every strength - here we get about 3 or 4 varieties. (Here, too, you can't sample it in the store - there you can! You can also drive down the road at 100 mph sampling it...:confused: ) Loved Veracruz's cooking - their seafood is soooooo very good! Had a plate of rice and fish - and a big rum drink - can't remember what that was called! :angel:
 
1856 - In the United States, drug addiction became a major problem during the Civil War when the hypodermic syringe, invented in the US in 1856, was used on a large scale during the war to inject morphine into soldiers to treat pain and dysentery. The uncontrolled manner in which it was administered created an addiction which was labeled "Army Disease."
 
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