Autumn is the prime time for coughs, sneezes and worse in the average family house.

And these days we’ll reach for all manner of over-the-counter pills and medicines to keep us going.

But in Victorian times, a doctor’s visit cost money, and most illnesses were treated with home-made remedies.

Colne Valley Museum volunteers have scoured old recipe books and periodicals to bring you a collection of our favourite medicines, tinctures, balms and ointments that we’ve found.

They’re all in a handy booklet, Mrs Pearson’s Remedies for Common Ailments, which you can buy from our shop for just £1.50. However, be warned, some of them are downright dangerous!

Here are some highlights, from the – probably – harmless to the totally toxic.

Obviously, don’t try these at home.

• If you are feeling run down, make a tonic with a few drops of iodine to a tumbler of milk, and take morning and night.
• Boil up beef steak, water and salt for three hours to make a restorative meat tea.
• Linseed, liquorice, lemon juice and blackcurrant jam with some added sugar makes a tasty and fortifying brew.
• Water simmered with bran for an hour, strained and jugged with lemon juice and honey adds up to a refreshing drink for ‘invalids’.
• For burns, soak a cotton pad in lime water, linseed oil and eucalyptus oil and bind tightly to the affected body part.
• Dress sores with a melted mix of camphor, white wax, lard and red precipitate.
• Make a green balm ointment from pig’s leaf lard and elder leaves simmered gently and strained into a small pot.
• Mix egg yolk, camphor, turps and vinegar in a bottle. Cork it and shake well to make a rubbing treatment.
• Sort out earache by wringing out a flannel in boiling water, sprinkling a few drops of laudanum on it – that’s a heavy-duty opium based painkiller – and dabbing it on your ear.

See the full recipes for these and more in Mrs Pearson’s Remedies for Common Ailments – affectionately attributed to Sally Pearson who built Spring Rock, what’s now our museum, with her husband James.

It’s one of many informative and entertaining publications in our shop.