Sunday, October 2, 2011

Good For What Ails You



"Lime-Flower Tea. To half an ounce of lime-flowers, placed in a tea-pot or jug, pour a pint of boiling water, and when the infusion has stood for ten minutes, sweeten with honey or sugar, and drink the tea hot, to assuage the pains in the stomach and chest, arising from indigestion.

This beverage may also be successfully administered in attacks of hysteria."

A Plain Cookery Book For The Working Classes, 1852, by Charles Francatelli. If I had to produce three meals a day in a kitchen like that, I'd probably have hysterics, myself.

3 comments:

  1. First, I wonder what kind of lime flowers they are talking about. Then, it makes one wonder if they might really be poisonous.
    As to the kitchen, no kidding, except that the one in the picture looks really nice compared to what most kitchens must have been like. (Does that make sense?)

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  2. I just discovered that "hysteria" is from a Greek root meaning something like, "pain in the uterus."

    I had no idea, and I have no idea what I'll do with this information.

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  3. Yes, GDad. It was once an article of faith among medical men that only females suffered from attacks of hysteria.

    Obviously they'd never heard of Andrew Breitbart.

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