Lard, liquorice, lemon and… laudanum? Victorian home remedies explored

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.