REMEMBER when you were little and one of your biggest worries was getting stung by nettles? It was a small price to pay for playing outside and we knew we would survive as long as we could just find a burdock leaf to rub on the sore spot.
These days, if we ever found ourselves hurtling into a nettle patch with childlike abandon, we would be more likely to head for the medicine cabinet and grab some cream to ease the pain.
Natural remedies, just like childhood memories, seem to be fading away into the realms of folklore.
This feeling of a lost heritage inspired author Cherry Chappell to write Grandma’s Remedies, a guide to traditional cures and treatments that are simple to make, eco-friendly and cheap.
“I called an elderly relative one day and she said, ‘Sorry I couldn’t come to the phone before, but the milkman had been stung by a wasp so I took out the sting and gave him half an onion’. I didn’t know about that,” Chappell explains.
“Then I tried to get hold of some bicarbonate of soda, which my grandmother, Annie Ely Bolton, used to use for everything from indigestion to sunburn and heartburn, and it’s actually quite hard to get packets.
“You can get soppy little packets for cooking, but nothing that’s a decent size. I realised there’s not enough profit in all these sorts of things, so they’re dying out; the information is getting lost and forgotten because it’s so much easier to whiz to the chemist.”
Chappell’s book tries to capture some of the healthcare practices our grandmothers and those before them would have used as part of everyday life.
Remedies were sometimes scribbled in recipe books or passed down orally through generations – and made from what was to hand, either growing in the garden or in the wild.
Chappell says: “I’m always astonished people don’t use some of the things they find in the country any more. I automatically go and collect blackberries, which are still one of the most wonderful forms of vitamin C and provide a remedy for diarrhoea. People don’t use rosehips, another source of vitamin C great for boosting the immune system, and they don’t use garlic leaves when wild garlic comes out.”
The book features simple treatments, from caraway seeds for flatulence, ginger tea for morning sickness and cotton-wool balls dipped in garlic for earache to rosemary infusion for indigestion and bee-sting therapy for rheumatoid arthritis.
But Chappell includes a note of caution: the remedies are not likely to cause serious side-effects unless you are unfortunate enough to be allergic to them, but if symptoms persist, take advice from a medical professional.
Watercress is a rich natural source of iron, potassium, calcium, sulphur and phosphorous, as well as vitamin C, and has been used throughout history.
“In about 400BC, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, is supposed to have founded his first hospital beside a stream so he could have watercress beds close by to boost his patients’ recovery,” Chappell says.
Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones recently admitted that her beauty routine includes rubbing a mixture of honey and salt over her body to moisturise and exfoliate. She also uses honey to condition her hair in a mixture with beer.
Another all-round superfood and natural antioxidant, honey is used in remedies for everything from acne to cold sores, hay fever and indigestion.
“It was also used to treat burns and wounds because it’s antiseptic and antibacterial,” Chappell says.
Versatile eggs have plenty of health properties – and can even be mixed with olive oil to cure hangovers.
Chappell’s egg-white remedies also include treatments for nappy rash and bed sores. And she makes a frothy mixture of two egg whites and a few drops of lemon for a face mask to treat acne.
Chappell also cites a sore-throat cure from Kate Fox’s personal book of household hints and medical “receipts” from the 1870s: “Take the white of two eggs and beat them, add two teaspoons of white sugar, grate in a little nutmeg and then add one pint (600ml) of lukewarm water. Stir well and drink often.”
Like honey, lavender oil is both antibacterial and antiseptic, and well known for its calming scent.
“Lavender pops up in all sorts of remedies,” says Chappell.
“Lavender oil is one of the few you can put directly on your skin undiluted. It’s very calming, very good for sleep and stress reduction, and works as an insect repellent.”
Chappell swears by essential lavender oil as a treatment for athlete’s foot.
“A few drops applied with cotton wool when the itching starts always seems to do the trick for me.”
Rubbed into the scalp, lavender oil can treat dandruff, and in Victorian times, it was rubbed into the temples or in a cold compress on the forehead or back of the neck to soothe headaches.
Grandma’s Remedies, by Cherry Chappell, is published by Random House, priced £14.99.