Bennett Family of Bedford & Somerset Counties, Pennsylvania

Times have definitely changed in the past 200 years!  Imagine (cringe if you will) a mother giving her child a spoonful of kerosene to get rid of worms, or putting a raw egg under the bed of a woman in labor to "cut the pain".  Were they really used?  Sure they were or we would not have found them in various books & almanac's, our ancestors passed all this great knowledge down to us, anyone dare to try one??  Laugh along with us an enjoy a few Home Remedies, Recipes & Superstitions...

Home Remedies

Headache Cure: A 10 minimum dose of tincture Indian Hemp taken 3 times daily before attacks. 

Whooping Cough: Onions & garlic sliced, of each, 1 gill, sweet oil, 1 gill; stew them in the oil in covered dish to obtain juices; then strain and add honey, 1 gill; paragoric and spirits of camphor, of each 1/2 ounce; bottle and cork tight for use  Another:  Obtain a piece of bread covered with apple butter from a person who has the same married surname as her maiden name.

Chocking: If possible remove the offending substance at once with the fingers, or with blunt scissors used as forceps, or a loop of small wire bent like a hairpin.  It may be possible to dislodge it by blowing strongly in the ear, or by causing the patient to vomit by tickling the throat.  In a child these efforts may be aided by holding it up by the legs.

To Extract Substances from nose: When a child has any substance wedged in its nostrils, press  the vacant nostril so as to close it, and apply your lips over the Childs mouth and blow very hard.  This simple method will generally force the substance out of the nostril.

Toad Ointment: For sprains, strains, lame-back, rheumatism, caked breasts, caked udders, etc.  Good sized live toads, 4 in number; put into boiling water and cook very soft; then take them out and boil the water down to 1/2 pint, and add fresh churned, unsalted butter, 1 pound, and simmer together; at the last add tincture of arnica, 2 ounces.

Ant Trap: One large sponge is needed, was well and dry.  Once cells of sponge are open, sprinkle with sugar & place near the areas ants are troublesome.  They will soon collect upon the sponge and take up their abode in the cells.  Dip the sponge in scalding water, which will wash them out dead by the tens of thousands.  Put on more sugar and set trap for a new haul.  This process will clear the house of every ant.

Drunkenness: To cure someone of Alcoholism scrape the dirt that collects under their fingernails and put in their whiskey.

Inflammation: To reduce inflammations make a poultice of warm Cow Dung, this also draws boils to a head.

Tumor: A tumor can be cured by stroking it with the right hand of a corpse.

Recipes from Yesteryear

"Flottkrengel" (German): Take one pound of dryflour, three-quarters of a pound of well washed butter, ten table-spoonfuls of cream.  For the top of these cakes melted butter or egg, powdered sugar and cinnamon.  Break the butter into small pieces and mix with the four, then add cream, mix quickly into a light paste.  from this break pieces and roll them out with hand about a quarter of a yard long, and hoin the two ends in the middle to give them the form of a "B"  When all are done, grease them on top with egg or melted butter, strewing sugar and cinnamon over them.  Bake cakes quickly.

Goose Giblets:  Take goose blood, take the feet, wings, stomach and neck and boil them in half water half wine.  Grate rye bread, fry it in fat, add to it also the blood from a goose and wine and some of broth in which the goose was cooked, sugar, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and let the pepper sauce cook for a long while, as much as three hours.  Then brown a few onions in fat and ad the fat to the pepper sauce, and when you would serve it sprinkle ginger thereon.

Liverwurst:  First take a quarter of a pig's liver, also a quarter of a pig's lungs, chop them small, after that chip bacon into small cubes and put salt and caraway seeds into it.  The liver and lungs must first be cooked, before they are chopped, and afterwards pour as much of this broth on the chopped meat as you feel is enough.  Then take the intestines from the slaughterhouse and fill them full, then you have good sausage.

Boiling an egg while saying the Lord's Prayer assures a soft boiled egg.

Superstitions

To guard against a child being left-handed, it must be nursed the first time at the right breast.

Immediately after birth a child must cry or be slapped until it does

A person born in January can see ghosts

To cure a child who wets the bed he should 'piddle' on a grave covered that day, after dusk.

For women, getting your belly wet while doing dishes is a sign of increase (as in pregnancy)

Cows are given the power of speech on the night of Christmas Eve anyone born on Christmas day can understand what the cows are saying.

If a plow kills a Daddy Long Leg the cows will go dry

Riding on a donkey, facing his tail end will prevent toothaches

If you eat a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day.