Grandma's Remedies: A Guide to Traditional Cures and Treatments from Mustard Poultices to Rosehip Syrup

Long before the advances of modern medicine, families used home-made remedies to treat everyday illnesses. Whether it was onion and garlic syrup for a tickly cough or vinegar and water compresses to bring down a high temperature, the kitchen and garden could always be relied on to supply simple and effective treatments. More often than not, these remedies would have been handed down verbally through the generations, before being transcribed carefully into family recipe books, then reused and refined year after year. Some of the remedies - even the most ancient ones - work surprisingly well. Did you know, for example, that two cups of strong black coffee will alleviate an asthma attack? Or that chewing toasted fennel seeds will help combat indigestion? Or that lavender has antiseptic qualities and also stimulates tissue repair, which is why it has been used for thousands of years in an ointment for cuts and bruises? But Grandma's Remedies is more than just an intriguing exploration of this home-grown branch of medicine, it also considers how gifted women healers have contributed to medical understanding, despite not being allowed to study as doctors, and paints a vivid portrait of the way our grandparents and great-grandparents lived. In the days before the NHS, sending for the doctor was expensive, reserved only for the greatest of emergencies. For everyday healthcare, it was the women of the family who had to turn to the store cupboard and provide a treatment. This invaluable spirit of resourcefulness resurfaced to great effect on the Home Front, when women were encouraged to collect sphagnum moss, rosehips and conkers that could be turned into dressings, treatments, and tonics for the war effort. In these days of readily-available antibiotics and painkillers, it is fascinating to discover how people survived when all they had to rely on was a garden, a larder and a healthy dose of common sense.