Useful Headache

headache.

(from Excelsior Cook Book and Housekeeper's Aid, by Laura Trowbridge, 1863)

Receipt:

This is a very prevalent complaint, and arises from different causes. If owing to acidity in the stomach, a little soda will do it good. Hop tea, camomile, sage, Cayenne pepper, is good for nervous headache; a few drops of camphor or hartshorn will sometimes give relief; bathing the feet in warm, and the head in cold water, putting mustard poultices on the feet, and the back part of the neck, is good. If it proceeds from a deficiency of acid in the stomach, a lemon, or a few drops of nitric acid, will relieve; tie the head with a bandage very tight, applying a brown paper wet with salt and vinegar. If subject to the headache, it is advisable to die.​

Cookbook author Laura Trowbridge had a different headache cure than one of Wilson's Pills...

You know how you sometimes bump into things when looking for something else? This would be one and I'm posting the link because it's such an unlikely thing for anyone to have published. Short thread, this ' recipe ', from the cookbook's ' sickroom ' section caught my eye.

Guessing it was either a misprint, or the author was having some fun, and it made it into the published copy? No other portions of Trowbridge's book display marks of the humorist- just this ( from what I can find ).

Swear to goodness the recipe says that " .... it is advisable to die ". Laughed for 20 minutes but kinda agree. Felt that way myself on occasion.

 

[donna]

A different cookbook. Will have to look at it.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

A different cookbook. Will have to look at it.

I forget where she's from? They seem to be most frequently from Virginia or Philly, Kentucky a close also-ran. You never see medical advice in cookbooks in 2020; 150 years ago there are few without the ' sickroom ' section. It wakes you up, too- cholera, diptheria, various killer fevers, whooping cough. Diseases that were deadly yet everyday worries and we don't give them much thought in 2020.

Love to know how effective any of the cures were. Maybe some were at least helpful? Without negating the value of where we are today in medicine I'm a little convinced we're badly missing elements of the past that would be useful by way of more natural, less intrusive applications. Ever try tumeric for instance, instead of aspirin or ibuprofren? Really does work and isn't tough on your stomach like ibuprofen.

 

[donna]

I have run into several old cookbooks with remedies for ailments. I know my Granny knew many remedies. She learned from her Mother. Some seemed to work.

 

[lupaglupa]

bathing the feet in warm, and the head in cold water

I'm wondering if this was meant to be done simultaneously??

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

I'm wondering if this was meant to be done simultaneously??

Boy, I don't know? She seems so desperate on the topic of headaches she may have tried everything before recommending death.

 

[lupaglupa]

Boy, I don't know? She seems so desperate on the topic of headaches she may have tried everything before recommending death.

You read periodically about people who suffered severe headaches, which seem to be migraines, in the time before they had really effective medicines. Migraines are awful with medicine - I can't imagine how bad they were without. Maybe after years of that she did feel pretty desperate.

 

[donna]

Both our son and son in law have migraines. They do have medicine. Those headaches are really bad. I know it had to be hard back in the day.