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Kitchen Cupboard Remedies

Fomentations

These are cloths of lint or flannel wrung out of hot or boiling water and used for similar purposes as poultices, but are lighter. The hot cloth is placed on toweling and twisted round till as much water as possible is squeezed out. If well wrung it may be applied very hot without any danger of scalding the skin.Fomentations with hot water are useful in relieving pain, stopping inflammations and checking the formation of matter. Acne and inflamed pimples can be reduced in size by them.They encourage the passage of matter to the surface and also assist its subsequent expulsion. As the water becomes cool it should be added to with more hot water and thereafter poultices should be applied as hot as possible. In inflammations, spasms and pains affecting deeply seated structures such as in the chest or abdomen great and quick relief often follows hot fomentations. The addition of Arnica tincture to the hot water will greatly enhance pain relief and reuce the trauma and shock felt. It will be even more effective if a dose of Arnica 6 or 30 is given frequently at the same time until no longer needed. If pain returns the Arnica may be repeated as often as necessary. NB - External use of Arnica is not to be used with broken skin or tissue, but may still be used internally. Calendula tincture is also very helpful used in hot fomentations where the skin is broken, grazed or burned on a superficial level. It will stop further bleeding, keep the wound clean and help remove the pain felt from the open wounds. Urtica Urens Tincture is very soothing if added to the fomentation in superficial burns.Hypericum tincture should be added if there is more than superficial cuts and grazes or deeper burns It has the property of preventing tetanus as well as healing tissue.

Dry fomentations

When heat alone is required to avoid the relaxation of the tissues which moisture would encourage, dry heated substances, bran, chamomile, calendula, or lavender flowers, salt and so on should be placed in a bag and heated in the oven, or in these days a microwave. If this is not available hot stones from a fire wrapped in thick material will work just as well.

Inhalations

This is a useful methol of administering various medicines into the air passages, especially where their action is needed on the mucous surfaces of the lungs. All that is needed is a jug of hot water over which the face is held and a towel put over the head so as to completely cover the head neck and shoulders.and the jug. A few drops of the medicine to be inhaled is put into the hot water and inhaled.

As a child in London after the war we had very bad pollution.We lived on the 5th floor of a block of council owned flats opposite Battersea Power Station which belched out thick yellow /black fumes 24 hours a day (we moved out into the countryside when I was 10). Smog - a combination of smoke and fog - was a common occurrence and I was severely ill as a young child with recurrent bronchitis, enlarged TB glands and eventually meningitis for which I was hospitalized in an isolation unit, and then sent for convalescence with other sick children to the sea side for 6 weeks. Whenever I was sickening for something, my mum used to make me have inhalations of hot water poured over Friar's Balsam which always helped relieve the congestion. I would then be rubbed down and put to bed to sleep it off overnight. She stopped me from having too many antibiotics by doing this and eventually her careful nursing care paid off. I became very healthy once we had moved out into the country. My mum was not a trained nurse - everything she knew came from her mother who had been "in service" to a doctor with a busy practice in the days when there were no antibiotics - or in fact any drugs as we know them today. Her father had been a "hedger and ditcher" who had spent his life trimming the hedges and digging out the ditches of the highways and byways of rural Sussex. He was illiterate and came from a poor peasant background so all his knowledge of the hedgerows and plants was passed down orally through the family. Thyme, as mentioned under "Baths" makes a good inhalation for people with any respiratory diseases, especially colds, flus and asthma. If no bath is available or perhaps not enough hot water to have a full bath, a good compromise is to sit the patient at the kitchen table with their feet in a basin of hot water and thyme and their heads over an inhalation.Eucalyptus is a popular remedy here in Australia and has long been known to assist in respiratory problems.

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