Good for What Ails You: Self-Help Remedies from 19th Century Canada

Don Crosby is a journalist in Durham, Ontario.

The format of this nostalgic collection of self-made remedies from
19th-century Canada is reminiscent of the Farmer’s Almanac, with
bearded purveyors of snake-oil medicine peering

out of posters that promise sure-fire cures for afflictions ranging from
sore nipples and frostbite to ringbone and cracked heels. Consider this
treatment for toothache: “If a child chews a bread crust that has been
gnawed by a mouse it will never be subject to a toothache.” Or this
one for a rupture: “Take the hand of a corpse and press the thumb on
the rupture and it will be cured.”

Most of the ailments addressed in this book were not life-threatening.
The family remedies that replaced such extreme measures as bloodletting
and the use of arsenic and mercury were part of the cultural baggage
that immigrants brought with them to North America and that became their
medical armamentarium until the evolution of clinical and scientific
medicine.