One or two figs eaten fasting is sufficient for some, and they are especially good in the case of children, as there is no trouble in getting them to take them.  A spoonful of wheaten bran in a glass of water is a simple remedy, and quite effective, taken half an hour before breakfast; fruit eaten raw; partake largely of laxative food; exercise in the open air; drink freely of cold water during the day, etc.  It is impossible to give many of the numerous treatments in so short a space, suffice it to say that the general character of our diet and experience is such as to assure us that at least one-quarter of the food that we swallow is intended by nature to be evacuated from the system; and if it is not, it is again absorbed into the system, poisoning the blood and producing much suffering and permanent disease.  The evacuation of the bowels daily, and above all, regularity, is therefore all important to aid this form of disorder.

RELIEF FROM ASTHMA.

Sufferers from asthma should get a muskrat skin and wear it over their lungs with the fur side next to the body.  It will bring certain relief.

Or soak blotting paper in saltpetre water, then dry, burning at night in the patient’s bedroom.

Another excellent recipe:  Take powdered liquorice root, powdered elecampane root, powdered anise-seed, each one drachm, powdered ipecac ten grains, powdered lobelia ten grains; add sufficient amount of tar to form into pills of ordinary size.  Take three or four pills on going to bed.  An excellent remedy for asthma or shortness of breath.

RECIPES FOR FELONS.

Take common rock salt, as used for salting down pork or beef, dry in an oven, then pound it fine and mix with spirits of turpentine in equal parts; put it in a rag and wrap it around the parts affected; as it gets dry put on more, and in twenty-four hours you are cured.  The felon will be dead.

Or purchase the herb of stramonium at the druggist’s; steep it and bind it on the felon; as soon as cold, put on new, warm herbs.  It will soon kill it, in a few hours at least.

Or saturate a bit or grated wild turnip, the size of a bean, with spirits of turpentine, and apply it to the affected part.  It relieves the pain at once; in twelve hours there will be a hole to the bone, and the felon destroyed; then apply healing salve, and the finger is well.

Another Way to Cure a Felon: Fill a tumbler with equal parts of fine salt and ice; mix well.  Sink the finger in the centre, allow it to remain until it is nearly frozen and numb; then withdraw it, and when sensation is restored, renew the operation four or five times, when it will be found the disease is destroyed.  This must be done before pus is formed.

A simple remedy for felons, relieving pain at once, no poulticing, no cutting, no “holes to the bone,” no necessity for healing salve, but simple oil of cedar applied a few times at the commencement of the felon, and the work is done.