Thursday, August the 26th, 2004
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Regular readers know that here at Hooting Yard we devote ourselves to their amusement, instruction, and moral edification. To date, however, we have perhaps neglected our duty to address matters of physical health, and more specifically to suggesting remedies for common ailments. Thus it is that we plan, over the next days or weeks, to reprint excerpts from the anonymous 1653 text A Book Of Fruits & Flowers or, to give its full title, A Book Of Fruits & Flowers: Shewing The Nature and Use of them, either for Meat or Medicine. As Also: To Preserve, Conserve, Candy, and in Wedges, or Dry them. To make Powders, Civet bagges, all sorts of Sugar-works, turn'd works in Sugar, Hollow, or Frutages; and to Pickell them. And for Meat. To make Pyes, Biscat, Maid Dishes, Marchpanes, Leeches, and Snow, Craknels, Caudels, Cakes, Broths, Fritter-stuffe, Puddings, Tarts, Syrupes, and Sallets. For Medicines. To make all sorts of Poultisses, and Serecloaths for any member swell'd or inflamed, Ointments, Waters for all Wounds, and Cancers, Salves for Aches, to take the Ague out of any place Burning or Scalding; For the stopping of suddain Bleeding, curing the Piles, Ulcers, Ruptures, Coughs, Consumptions, and killing of Warts, to dissolve the Stone, killing the Ring-worme, Emroids, and Dropsie, Paine in the Ears and Teeth, Deafnesse.
We begin with a truly effective medicament for the piles:
Take a little Orpine, Hackdagger, and Elecampane, stamp them all together with Boares grease, into the form of an Oyntment, and lay them to the place grieved.
Should you have any difficulty obtaining boar's grease, I am sure the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury will respond to requests. Most big supermarkets now have “suggestion boxes”, and readers are encouraged to make use of them.