Of course, the remedies given in this book were largely for the diseases
of the day. Physicians and parsons, lords and ladies, combined to
furnish complex and elaborate prescriptions and perfumes to cure and
avert the plague; and the list includes one plague-cure that the Lord
Mayor had from the Queen, and I may add that it is a particularly
unpleasant and revolting one. A plague swept through New England and
decimated the Indian tribes; and though it was not at all like the great
plague that devastated London, I doubt not red man and white man took
confidingly and faithfully medicines such as are given in this little
book of mine: the king's feeble and much-vaunted dose of "White Wine,
Ginger, Treacle, and Sage;" Dr. Atkinson's excellent perfume against the
Plague, of "Angelica roots and Wine Vinegar, that if taken fasting, your
breath would kill the Plague" (it must have been a fearful dose); "Mr.
Fenton's the Chirurgeon's Posset and his Sedour Root."

Cures for small-pox and for gout are many. Varied are the lotions for
the "pin and web in the eye;" so many are there of these that it makes
me suspect that our forefathers were sadly sore-eyed.

One very prevalent ail that our ancestors had to endure (if we can judge
from the number of prescriptions for its relief) was a "cold stomack;"
literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by
external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of
grasse" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side,
placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she
was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon
her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities"
that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure
pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A
"Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is
asserted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and
keep yourself from studying and musing and it will comfort you much." So
it seems you ought not to study nor to muse if your stomach be cold.

Many and manifold are the remedies to "chear the heart," to "drive
melancholy," to "cure one pensive," "for the megrums," "for a grief;"
and without doubt the lonely colonists often needed them. We know, too,
that "things ill for the heart were beans, pease, sadness, onions,
anger, evil tidings, and loss of friends,"--