All herbs should be carefully kept from the air. Herb tea, to do any
good, should be made _very strong_.
Herbs should be gathered while in blossom. If left till they have
gone to seed, the strength goes into the seed. Those who have a little
patch of ground, will do well to raise the most important herbs; and
those who have not, will do well to get them in quantities from some
friend in the country; for apothecaries make very great profit upon
them.
Sage is very useful both as a medicine, for the headache--when made
into tea--and for all kinds of stuffing, when dried and rubbed into
powder. It should be kept tight from the air.
Summer-savory is excellent to season soup, broth, and sausages. As a
medicine, it relieves the cholic. Pennyroyal and tansy are good for
the same medicinal purpose.
Green wormwood bruised is excellent for a fresh wound of any kind.
In winter, when wormwood is dry, it is necessary to soften it in warm
vinegar, or spirit, before it is bruised, and applied to the wound.
Hyssop tea is good for sudden colds, and disorders on the lungs. It
is necessary to be very careful about exposure after taking it; it is
peculiarly opening to the pores.
Tea made of colt's-foot and flax-seed, sweetened with honey, is a
cure for inveterate coughs. Consumptions have been prevented by it. It
should be drank when going to bed; though it does good to drink it at
any time. Hoarhound is useful in consumptive complaints.
Motherwort tea is very quieting to the nerves. Students, and people
troubled with wakefulness, find it useful.
Thoroughwort is excellent for dyspepsy, and every disorder occasioned
by indigestion. If the stomach be foul, it operates like a gentle
emetic.
Sweet-balm tea is cooling when one is in a feverish state.
Catnip, particularly the blossoms, made into tea, is good to prevent a
threatened fever. It produces a fine perspiration. It should be taken
in bed, and the patient kept warm.
Housekeepers should always dry leaves of the burdock and horseradish.
Burdocks warmed in vinegar, with the hard, stalky parts cut out, are
very soothing, applied to the feet; they produce a sweet and gentle
perspiration. Horseradish is more powerful. It is excellent in cases
of the ague, placed on the part affected. Warmed in vinegar, and
clapped.
Succory is a very valuable herb. The tea, sweetened with molasses, is
good for the piles. It is a gentle and healthy physic, a preventive
of dyspepsy, humors, inflammation, and all the evils resulting from a
restricted state of the system.
Elder-blow tea has a similar effect. It is cool and soothing, and
peculiarly efficacious either for babes or grown people, when the
digestive powers are out of order.
Lungwort, maiden-hair, hyssop, elecampane and hoarhound steeped
together, is an almost certain cure for a cough. A wine-glass full to
be taken when going to bed.
Few people know how to keep the flavor of sweet-marjoram; the best
of all herbs for broth and stuffing. It should be gathered in bud or
blossom, and dried in a tin-kitchen at a moderate distance from the
fire; when dry, it should be immediately rubbed, sifted, and corked up
in a bottle carefully.
English-mallows steeped in milk is good for the dysentery.
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