A century ago a visit to the doctor was something not to be undertaken lightly. It cost money, when for working folk this was a scarce commodity, you would also be considered somewhat of a weakling except for the most serious of cases.

 

Alternative medicine was in fact the first choice for many and indeed, there were many alternatives to consider.

 

For a chesty cold, for instance, you were advised to cut a piece of brown paper into a heart shape, warm it, rub it with a tallow candle, and lay it on your chest. The significance of the heart shape was more of faith than cure.

For a bad back, a wife was advised to lay a piece of brown paper on her husband's lumbar regions and iron it with a hot flat-iron. One man was burnt by his wife in this way, and never complained about back-ache again.

 

A common belief for Rheumatism was to carry something around with you such as an unusually shaped stone, or more often a potato - this would prevent aches and pains. Another gruesome belief was that an executed man's bones would do even better, and those taken from some poor wretch who had been hanged for murder and then exposed on a gibbet were much in demand.

 

 

Mice, baked and eaten with onions, were suggested as a cure for whooping cough. Mice baked to a cinder, powdered, and eaten with jam were a sure cure for bed-wetting in children. Dried and powdered, they were a remedy for diabetes.
A live spider rolled up in butter and swallowed was said to cure jaundice. Another use for a spider was to swallow it wrapped in its own web, as a cure for ague, a kind of malaria one much more common than today. A little less distasteful was the use of the spider's web by itself, as a quick and easy way to staunch blood from a cut, even a very bad one.

 

 

 

Warts probably inspired more home cures than any other problem.

The most popular cure was to rub the wart with a piece of raw meat, which was then buried. Warts may also be made to disappear by wishing them onto someone else, a most anti-social act, or by selling them, often to the local wise woman. As a last resort there was always the wart-charmer - a sort of white witch who had the power to remove warts at will.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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