Or Be Electrocuted

Back in September I took part in a group art exhibition in Bruges. And for that I produced a silkscreen print - 3 colours plus spot hand colouring - in an edition of 35. Fits neatly in a standard 30 x 40 cm. frame.
Click on image to read and get in touch if you are interested... a snip at £50.

Stop the Rot

"The decay usually makes it's appearance in the form of a spot on the surface of the fruit. This should be scooped out and the hole filled with plaster of Paris formed into a paste to the consistency of thick cream by the addition of water.This will set quite firm and arrest further decay. The contents of the fruit-room should be examined at least once a week."
The Horticultural Notebook J.C.Newsham 1914

Mud Poultices

After a full season of beelessness, this evening we housed a nucleus in our chicken-loud glade. And I got stung thrice on the head for my trouble. I remember my first ever sting when I was about five and by way of a remedy my mother pressed a spoonful of mud on it - a sort of poultice to draw the poison out. Unfortunately I didn't remember until a long while after I was set upon - too late to find out whether it's effectiveness wasn't largely dependent upon the presence of mother.

A Place for Everything...

... and everything in it's place.


" Nothing shows more, perhaps, the difference between a tidy thrifty housewife and a lady to whom these desirable epithets may not honestly be applied, than the appearance of their respective store-closets. The former is able, the moment anything is wanted, to put her hand on it at once; no time is lost, no vexation incurred, no dish spoilt for the want of 'just a little something' - the latter, on the contrary, hunts all over her cupboard for the ketchup the cook requires, or the pickle the husband thinks he should like a little of with his cold roast beef or mutton-chop, and vainly seeks for the Embden groats, or arrowroot, to make one of her little boys some gruel. One plan then, we strenuously advise all who do not follow, to begin at once, and that is, to label all their various pickles and store sauces... It will occupy a little time at first, but there will be economy of it in the long run."
Mrs. Beeton

The Complete Guide To Health

I've just come across 'The Reformed Botanic & Indian Physician - A Complete Guide To Health' written in 1855 by Dr. Daniel Smith and available to be perused online here. The Doctor is a great believer in the healing power of a cold water bath (for involuntary urine, diabetes, cholera, scorbutick atrophy & more) and although he hasn't any suggestions for beets (see last post), there are a great many curatives which call for the use of other foodstuffs. I have illustrated below what I consider to be the '12 best food remedies you aren't wearing'.


1. For A High Fever If delirious, use cold bathings, give a little port wine after plunging. Apply warm lamb's lungs to the head.
2. Deafness, With Head Ache and Buzzing In The Head Peel a clove of garlic and dip it in honey, and put it in your ear at night with a little black wool. Lie with your ear upwards, and put it in the other ear the next night, if needed, for eight to ten days.
3. For The Ear-Ache Rub the ear hard for fifteen minutes; or be electrified; or put in the ear a roasted fig, hot.
4. For A Cold In The Head Pare the rind of an orange very thin and roll it up inside out, and put a roll in each nostril.
5. Hard Breasts Apply turnips roasted till soft, wash and mix with a little oil of roses. Change this poultice twice a day, and keep it warm with a flannel.
6. For A Stitch In The Side Apply hot toast spread with molasses.
7. Fever Sores Put on a poultice of stewed pumpkin as warm as can be borne. Repeat it once every two or three hours till cured. It will bring out the loose bones. Or bath the sore in the water where a blacksmith cools his iron.
8. For Falling Of The Fundament Boil one ounce of red rose leaves in one gill of red wine, dip a cloth in it and apply it as hot as can be borne, till all is used, and drink cherry bark tea freely.
9. To Give Action To The Bowels Poultice with powdered carrots. Add and moisten with essence of sassafras.
10. For Warts Rub them daily with radishes.
11. For A Broken Shin Bind on a plaster of balsam, beeswax and mutton tallow, equal parts, melted together.
12. To Cure Chilblains Rub with salt and onions when powdered together; or a poultice of roasted onions kept on two or three days - change often. Seldom fails.

Home-Grown Porridge

First sow, water, weed and 9 months later harvest the oats. Second, thresh, separate and clean the oats. Then you can follow this Recipe for Gruel. It's that easy !
Blessed Hildegard has a few things to say about oats.
"They are both rich and healthy nourishment for healthy people; they provide a rich mind and a pure and clear intellect; and they provide good colour and healthy flesh. And oats are good for those that are somewhat and moderately ill. It does not hurt them , whether eaten in bread or cereal. But let whoever is worn out with paralysis and as a result has a split mind and empty thoughts, so that the person is somewhat insane, be in a sweat bath when the 'wheat' in the hot water in which it has been cooked is poured over the hot stones. Let them do this often; they will return to themselves and regain sanity."

Indelible Ink

Take 1 part sal ammoniac, 1 part verdigris, 1/2 part lampblack, and 10 parts of water; mix thoroughly together and keep in a glass-stoppered bottle; shake before using; write with a medium-pointed steel pen. Another useful ink can be readily made by dissolving half a teaspoonful of sulphate of copper in an ordinary penny bottle of writing ink; use with a quill pen.
Garden Recipes from The Horticultural Note-Book


You may have guessed that these are all varieties of tomatoes.

And so I shan't.

Saline Solution

I've been doing battle with a sore throat now for over a week, dousing it with honey, pots of tea, lashings of chicken soup and gargling with salt water. What I don't want to do is go to the doctor, have her glance at it and promptly write up a penicillin prescription, all within the 7 minutes allocated for an appointment. Does anyone know of a doctor who will take up his or her quill-pen, and scrawl out in spidery but legible longhand that 'the patient must take the waters in this or that spa town and not return until fully restored to health'? Send me details.
Over Christmas we visited Bad Rothefelde where generations of delicate Germans have been sent for their rest cures. The most amazing feature there is the 'Gradierwerk' or saline. This is a 30 foot high, 1/2 a kilometre long thatched wall built in the 18th century. The salt spring water is pumped up to the top and trickles down the blackthorn thatch, allowing evaporation and increasing the salt content from 4% to about 25%. Finally it is boiled down to extract the salt. There is a chamber inside the wall (very like a sauna, only cold so you leave your clothes on). It is filled with a dense fog of salt vapour which you inhale through your nose and exhale out of your mouth for 15 minutes at a time. And over time you will become the very picture of gesundheit.

If you click on the picture, you'll see the water trickling over the thatch and also some thatch encrusted with minerals which will get replaced in time. The longshot doesn't really do justice to it's size.

World Cabbage Day

February 17th, it was. And I missed it! Where was all the jubilee, fanfare and bunting? It's one of the few things still going strong in the garden right now so I guess I'll go on celebrating it for the next month or two.
Last year I came across Cato's 'In Praise of Cabbages'. Firstly, he is most emphatic that "Cabbage surpasses all vegetables. Eat it either cooked or raw: if you eat it raw, dress it with vinegar. It aids digestion remarkably and does the bowels good, and the urine will be beneficial for all purposes." Mmm, and what could those be, you might be piqued to inquire? Well, "...store the urine of anyone who habitually eats cabbage; warm it, bathe the patient in it. With this treatment you will soon restore to health; it has been tested. Also, if a woman foments her parts with this urine, they will never irritate. Foment as follows: boil in a basin and place under a commode; the woman is then to sit on the commode, covering the basin with her clothing."
And just about any other ailment - insomnia, aching joints, septic wounds and nasal polyps can be treated with steeped leaves or ground cabbage potions.
There are some people who can be induced to vomit by just being presented with a plate of boiled cabbage, but ..." If you want to purge by vomiting, take 4 lbs. of the tenderest cabbage, divide into three equal bunches and tie. Then put a pot of water on the fire, and when it begins to boil plunge one bunch into it briefly. It will stop boiling. Then, as it boils, plunge the bunch again while you count to five, and take it out. Do the same with the second bunch, and then the third. Then put all together and pound. Remove into a linen bag, and express about a pint of juice into an earthenware mug. Add a salt crystal about the size of a bitter vetch seed, and roasted cumin seed enough to give flavour. Then put the mug outdoors, in good weather, overnight. The person who is to take the medicine should have a hot bath, drink honey water, and go to bed without dinner, then in the morning drink the juice and walk for four hours, and do any business required. When the urge comes and the nausea is felt, recline and vomit. So much bile and phlegm will be thrown up that the patient will wonder where it all came from. "

Happy Pancake Eating

I'm just thawing out after 10 days in a bleak and snow-driven Canadian outpost - the name of which apparently derives from the Mohawk word for 'where there are trees standing in the water'. It's got me thinking about chilblains. When was the last time you heard someone complain of a chilblain? Well at any rate I've come across this remedy should one be in need from Heath Robinson's 'Sicilian Char Woman'.
" ... and in his fifth year he developed a chilblain of the most painful description. Every remedy was tried, dried turnip seed, applications of roasted capers, poultices of wild figs and nard, fomentations of honey and turbot's roe, and many other recipes for the curing of chilblains, recommended by anxious friends. Nevertheless the blain grew chillier and chillier until at last they were compelled to send for a physician.
The physician, after spending a whole afternoon examining the foot, eventually took the most serious view of the case imaginable, and hastily wrote out the following prescription, promising to call again in a few days:
1 Pint New Gruel, 1 gr. Tincture of Green Acorns, 1/2 gr. Hypo, 1/16 gr. Castor Sugar, 3 Clove Kernels, 1/2 lb. Coffee Essence, 3/4 lb. Sugar of Zinc, 2 gr. Bisulphate of Lead, 1 Pint Spirits of Sulphur, 5 gr. Bicarbonate of Saltpetre, 1 oz. Table Salt.
Three drops to be mixed in a quart of lukewarm water and gently rubbed into the roots of the blain every five minutes, day and night, until it's disappearance, which, if all went well, should take place in about six month's time. "