Homemade Remedies: Cooking for Invalids

The reality of American life, whether in the fast-growing cities, or out across the vast plains, was that for rich and poor alike, disease was rampant. In addition to published books, family household accounts and individual diaries often listed remedies. A fine example of these personal records are those left behind by the wealthy New York Van Rensselaer family women, who wrote out cures for everything from sore throats (rue steeped in rum) and earaches (a roasted onion pressed, still warm, to the afflicted ear), to frozen limbs (rub with warm goose grease). Other common household remedies included black cherry bark, blackberries, allspice, and rhubarb to alleviate diarrhea and dysentery and turpentine, camphor, laudanum, and peppermint to battle cholera.