Advice from the 1800's

At a thrift store recently, I found the funniest little book that I gave to my mom for her birthday. It's called the Ladies' Indispensable Assistant. Actually, the full title is quite long-winded:

Ladies' Indispensable Assistant being a companion for the Sister, Mother, and Wife. Containing more information for the price than any other upon the subject. Here are the very best directions for the Behavior and Etiquette of Ladies and Gentlemen, Ladies' Toilette Table, Directions for Managing Canary Birds, also, Safe Directions for the Management of Children; Instructions for Ladies' Under Various Circumstances, A Great Variety of Valuable Recipes, forming a complete system of Family Medicine. Thus enabling each person to become his or her own Physician: to which is added one of the best systems of COOKERY ever published; these recipes are entirely new and should be in the possession of every person in the land. Published 1852.

Pretty lofty claims if you ask me, but I was hooked! The first few pages were quite interesting. For instance, here is the instruction for Treatment of Children:

It is of great importance that mothers should understand the management of their offspring. It should not be handled but kept as quiet as possible.

Well, that's interesting. On the subject of Medicine:

Never give medicine to a very young child. Many have thus lost darling children. It will, if not murdered, be permanently injured.

Oh, my. Well, I continued to leaf through the pages and was shocked to see that there was a remedy for Cancer! Can you believe it? Here it is:

Boil down the inner bark of white and red oak to the consistency of molasses; apply as a plaster, shifting it once a week; or, Take garget berries and leaves of stramonium; simmer together, in equal parts of neat's foot oil and the tops of hemlock; at the same time, make a tea of wintergreen, add 2 ounces of sulphur of brimstone and drink freely during the day.

Hmmm. Sounds like witchcraft to me - hemlock? brimstone? Didn't I hear about that in a fairytale once? I turned to the remedy for Deafness, which I'm sure the prestigious medical community of today will be quite amazed to learn of:

Take ant's eggs and onion juice, mix and drop into the ear; or, drop into the ear at night six or eight drops of warm chamber lye.

Warm chamber lye? Yes, I had to look that up - definition: Urine. Aha. Well, perhaps it's not the cure of the century after all! Is it any wonder that in the 1800's only 1/2 of all children lived to the age of eight and the average life expectancy was 37? My goodness, let's read on!

If your child is suffering from Fits, then you need to:

Put them into warm baths, ... take them out after a little time and put strong mustard plasters on the soles of their feet and ice water on the head. If the fit has been cause by something eaten, give ... ipecac; vomitting will throw all the medicine up so that the child will not be injured. If the fit arises from other causes, half a tablespoon full of epsom salts disolved in a 1/4 glass of water.

For snake bites:

Apply juice of onions mixed with fine salt; or, apply Spanish flies until a blister is raised.

And, my favorite... for "Nervous Affections - Sick Headache":

Take 3 drops of nitric acid in half a tumbler of cold water.

Definition of nitric acid? A highly corrosive, poisonous liquid that gives off choking red or yellow fumes in moist air. Okay, then! That oughta cure a headache awfully quick!

There were some other interesting things in the book, including the properties of various herbs and flowers and recipes. We thought this "Quick Broth" was pretty amusing, since the term "Quick" was anything but!

Take a bone of the neck or loin of mutton, take off the fat and skin, set it on the fire in a small tin saucepan that has a cover with 3 quarters of a pint of water, meat being first beaten and cut into thin bits; put in a bit of thyme, parsley and a slice of onion. Let it boil very quick, skim it nicely; take off the cover. Half an hour is sufficient for the whole process.

I also liked the instructions for Behavior in the Street:

Ladies are not allowed upon ordinary occasions to take the arm of any one but a relative, or an accepted lover, in the street and in the daytime. The conversation of a stranger, beyond asking a necessary question, must be considered as a gross insult and repelled with proper spirit!

And these instructions for Removing Ink from Floors:

Scour with sand wet with sulphuric acid and water.

(What's with the acid?) Anyway, we had fun leafing through the book and having a good laugh! I especially liked the elaborate drawing on the inside. Fun stuff...

Old Books on Quiet Mornings

Last Sunday morning when I woke up, my daughter was playing her video games and my husband was on the computer. I decided to check out one of the fabulous vintage books that my sister gave to me for Christmas. I chose a little one called "The Christmas Angel" by Abbie Farwell Brown.

This book was published in 1910 and the wonderful thing about the copy that I have is that it was given as a gift to Miss Nellie Johnson for "Perfect attendance, Plymouth Sunday School, Year 1910" in Utica, NY. You can view the actual copy that I have or believe it or not get the newer version that was published in 1999! (It's just astounding to me that books from the early 1900's are so well documented on the web!)

The other wonderful thing about my copy is that it had a green construction paper cutout of a Christmas tree, perhaps made by Nellie. It had been in the book for so long that it stained the pages with the outline of the limbs! I could just imagine their Sunday School class talking about the meaning of Christmas and making the delicate little trees.

Anyway, I got a blanket and a fresh cup of coffee and settled in to read this charming little story. It's reminiscent of the Christmas Carol but much more touching...

We are introduced to Miss Terry, a stern, no-nonsense spinster that sits before a fire on Christmas Eve with a big box of Christmas toys from her childhood that have been collecting dust in her attic for years. She's ready to burn the entire collection but to prove her belief that Christmas is nothing more than commercialism at its best, she decides to conduct a few experiments. She does this by throwing out one toy at a time on her darkened door step and rushing to the window to see what happens. The reactions of passers by strengthens her belief of selfishness and complete disregard for humanity, even at Christmas time.

But then she throws out The Christmas Angel. A delicate little pink paper-mache tree ornament that holds sentimental feelings for her and brings back memories of her youth. A drunken man stumbles by and kicks the pretty little angel. Filled with an unexplainable emotion, she rushes out to rescue him from the snow. She props him on the mantle and proceeds to burn the rest of the toys. After that nasty bit of business is finished, she falls asleep in her chair by the fire.

While she sleeps, the Christmas Angel comes to life and she thinks she is in a dream. He shows her the rest of the story she did not see from behind the heavy curtains of her windowsill. From the fighting boys that give their toy to a brother suffering from a serious illness to a crass, pompous man who saves the life of a baby who crawled in the street about to be hit by a car. Overnight, she becomes transformed. Her heart opens to the true spirit of Christmas!

It's such a lovely little story and I finished it all on that Sunday morning. I actually thought it might be cute to start collecting these old copies of Christmas books. I just love them! You can imagine so much history in old books... Previous owners, their lives, their homes. For me, there is something so much more personal about books than an antique or old garment. So, in the coming months, I might be heading out to the used bookstores to see what I can find!

Book Review: Peace Like a River

I recently finished this incredible book, Peace Like a River by Leif Engler. I love books that make you laugh and cry simultaneously and this was one of them.

The story is set in a small Minnesota town. An 11-year-old boy is the narrator, his name is Reuben. His 8-year-old sister, Swede, is a pistol - precocious, smart, a gifted writer and story teller. She is fascinated with outlaws and stories of the west. They have a 16-year-old brother and a deeply religious father - a gentle, wise, forgiving man that would do anything for his family.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the 16-year-old guns down two high school thugs when they break into their home. The town turns against him, the trial goes sour and he breaks out of jail. The family leaves town to try to find him.

There are a few things in particular that resonated with me in this story. One is the way Reuben witnesses the miracles of his father that go unnoticed by everyone, including the family. These amazing, ethereal events are told in such a soft, gentle way, that the peacefulness of them just seem to wash over you:

"He walked right off the edge of the truck...
And did not fall.
Dad's boots touched the tops of a thatch of tall grama
growing up among the thistles,
and they waved as if stroked by the wind."

The other is the relationship that Reuben and Swede have. There was another reviewer that compared them to Scout and in To Kill a Mockingbird and I agree. Like two cohorts, they have an amazingly strong bond. It's really very touching. In one scene, they are driving in a freezing cold car to go hunting for geese with the family. They are buried in blankets and Swede slips off her boots. She puts her icy cold toes against his hip. He pulls them into his lap and starts to rub them to keep them warm. She promptly drifts off to sleep.

And of course, I love Swede and her poems of Sunny Sundown, the honest law-abiding citizen turned outlaw:

His clothes and hat were black as ink, his dancing mustang pale,
His eyes were blue and hard enough to make the sun turn tail.
He said, "You want to hang this man, I'll give you each the same.
I don't much like a mob," said he, "and Sundown is my name."

I can usually gauge a book to be one that I will like within the first paragraph, sometimes the first page. This one had me at the first sentence:

"From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs
and the air to fill them with..."

Hooray for great books such as this! If you have a particularly inspirational book that you've read recently, please share! I'm always on the lookout for a new recommendation!