Honey & Lemon was the first thing everyone used when I was a kid. Funny how quickly it has become a 'folk recipe' - one that required allopathic pharmaceutical approval before it became real.
Honey and lemon was what I was given as a child in the 1930s and 1940s, when I had a cough. My grandmother added some whiskey to the honey, lemon and hot water, when i had a very painful earache...and it put me to sleep. When I woke up, the earache was gone.
In a lot of those older recipes, where they say "a teacup", "a glass" etc they are using what is known as a "parts" approach. This is where the size of the item used to measure is not important, what is important is how many used. So it may say 1 part lemon juice, 1/2 part honey, 3 parts boiling water. Or, 1 glass lemon juice, half a glass honey, 3 glasses boiling water. So you can use anything to measure as long the number of "parts" is specified. Hope that's clear :)
My German mother gave us a spoonful of butter, granulated sugar, and vinegar, mixed together, for tickly coughs. I quite liked it, the sugar would kind of scratch the itch, be sweet, the butter would help it slide down. The vinegar must have been "the medicine". Honey and lemon are good too! I use these methods.
Depends. Sometimes we use Grok or ChatGPT. For this one, we used StartPage.com, search for book title and author and add PDF to the search box. Lots of trial and error, but mostly we find what we need.
"A glass" isn't a useful unit of measurement when the size of glasses varies so widely. Six ounces is a very different ratio of acid to honey than twelve - which would use an entire jar of honey! Do any of these recipes have any guidelines on a ballpark measurement of honey to use, or are there historical resources documenting what size glass container they were most likely using?
I'm referring to the recipe that calls for 2 Tbs lemon juice and enough honey to fill "a glass". I already know about parts ratios - 1 part lemon juice to 2 parts honey would have been perfectly clear. That's not how the "recipe" was given. Do you have a clear recipe? I'm not wading through the comments for it.
I have rarely used commercial cough syrups. I find a teaspoon of olive oil is soothing for a tickly throat, but honey and lemon has been known about for ever it seems. Good to know apple cider vinegar works with honey too.
I like salad dressing with mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar and honey. Have this and avoid a cough in the first place.
We use a cough syrup made by (sorry! I originally wrote weleda, which is wrong, it's made by uriel) called Plantain and Spruce. It has some homeopathics in it. My daughter always swears it is more effective than what you would buy in a pharmacy. They also make a salve to rub on the chest that helps, I believe it also has homeopathics in it.
I've also made a syrup that uses crushed garlic, crushed ginger, raw honey, lemon juice, maybe turmeric plus black pepper, can't remember if maybe there was ACV or anything else. You mix it all and let it sit for a week or so. Potent and helps!
I well remember when LSU's Jamarcus Russell became the #1 pick in the NFL draft. And promptly destroyed his career because of his addiction to something called "Purple Drank" -- a mixture of high-potency, codeine-laced cough syrup, with Jolly Ranchers dissolved in it. I bring that up when people ask me about commercial cough syrups.
I had a BAD reaction to cough medicine one time, I felt totally loopy and like I was on another planet. My kids asked me a question and I remember looking at their faces thinking "they're expecting an answer. I better come up with something." It was AWFUL.
It said on the bottle that you could take it every 4-6 hours so I was taking it only at bedtime thinking surely it would be out of my system by the morning . . .kept taking it because the cough was so bad it was keeping me awake. But it was not out of my system . . . it turns out I'm a "slow processer."
After I stopped it was days before it was out of my system. A friend said "well yeah, the generic of robitussin is what the college kids take to get high" and to this day I wonder why anyone would seek out that feeling because it was so terrible.
I looked up original sizes of the famous Ball corporation glass canning jars since they’ve been around since the 1800s and seem a likely candidate. Researched cough syrup in ball glass jars and it said either 8 or 16 oz, most likely 8. For boiling the lemon, common sense I think would be ‘enough to cover’. I’m going to try it!
Too bad generations are getting further away from a remedy that is safe and effective and closer to pharmaceuticals that are just the opposite. No wonder I'm seeing fewer and fewer bees!
If using apple cider vinegar (acv), would we just boil the thyme (no vinegar), then mix the vinegar, honey, and a splash of the thyme water?
"Boil the lemon slowly for ten minutes with the thyme in the same water. The simmer softens the rind and extracts the lemon juice, and it draws the thymol and volatile oils out of the thyme into the water. Fish out the thyme sprig (or strain if using dried) and discard. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into an ordinary drinking glass. Add a splash of the thyme-infused water. Fill the rest of the glass with honey. Stir well.
If lemons are not available, use two tablespoons of apple-cider vinegar in place of the lemon juice. The vinegar variant is well-attested in the folk record."
Raw. The other stuff has all the goodness taken out of it. Just like pasteurized milk...basically coloured water with chemical additives to put back what nature had already thought if.
Unfortunately, Bayer/Monsanto are killing off all the honeybees with their many chemicals.
If we don't stop them, we aren't going to have anymore honey.
That is part of the bee die-off. The pollinization they do every year makes hundreds of crops bear their fruit as well. This is not good.
Honey & Lemon was the first thing everyone used when I was a kid. Funny how quickly it has become a 'folk recipe' - one that required allopathic pharmaceutical approval before it became real.
Honey and lemon was what I was given as a child in the 1930s and 1940s, when I had a cough. My grandmother added some whiskey to the honey, lemon and hot water, when i had a very painful earache...and it put me to sleep. When I woke up, the earache was gone.
What is the measurement of the glass?
In a lot of those older recipes, where they say "a teacup", "a glass" etc they are using what is known as a "parts" approach. This is where the size of the item used to measure is not important, what is important is how many used. So it may say 1 part lemon juice, 1/2 part honey, 3 parts boiling water. Or, 1 glass lemon juice, half a glass honey, 3 glasses boiling water. So you can use anything to measure as long the number of "parts" is specified. Hope that's clear :)
It mentions an 8 ounce glass
Thank you.
My German mother gave us a spoonful of butter, granulated sugar, and vinegar, mixed together, for tickly coughs. I quite liked it, the sugar would kind of scratch the itch, be sweet, the butter would help it slide down. The vinegar must have been "the medicine". Honey and lemon are good too! I use these methods.
1. Jarvis DC. "Folk Medicine: A Doctor’s Guide to Good Health"
ONLINE: https://archive.org/details/folkmedicine0000unse
_____
2. Kloss J. "Back to Eden"
ONLINE: https://archive.org/details/backtoedenhumani00klos_0
_____
EDIT: Perhaps the Jarvis book defines "ordinary drinking glass," but I have not checked.
Here is a PDF of “Folk Medicine…” https://biri.org/pdf/books/JARVIS-DC-Folk-Medicine-1960.pdf
Could not quickly find an easily downloadable version of Back to Eden
What is your method for finding these full book PDFs?
Depends. Sometimes we use Grok or ChatGPT. For this one, we used StartPage.com, search for book title and author and add PDF to the search box. Lots of trial and error, but mostly we find what we need.
Thank you. Sometimes I go looking and then think that there must be a better way.
Gutenberg project has a library of all sorts of e books. Some free. Most downloadable or read on site. It’s worth a try.
Thank you!
"A glass" isn't a useful unit of measurement when the size of glasses varies so widely. Six ounces is a very different ratio of acid to honey than twelve - which would use an entire jar of honey! Do any of these recipes have any guidelines on a ballpark measurement of honey to use, or are there historical resources documenting what size glass container they were most likely using?
The intructions say nothing about the water with the thyme added, either.
See my reply to Gwyneth :)
I'm referring to the recipe that calls for 2 Tbs lemon juice and enough honey to fill "a glass". I already know about parts ratios - 1 part lemon juice to 2 parts honey would have been perfectly clear. That's not how the "recipe" was given. Do you have a clear recipe? I'm not wading through the comments for it.
This is a case where the bees outperform the wasp-like allopathic system.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/wasp-vs-bee-intelligence
When will we start to follow the results instead of the claims?
I have rarely used commercial cough syrups. I find a teaspoon of olive oil is soothing for a tickly throat, but honey and lemon has been known about for ever it seems. Good to know apple cider vinegar works with honey too.
I like salad dressing with mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar and honey. Have this and avoid a cough in the first place.
I see Dextromethorphan anagrams to:
- phd torment hoaxer
- rx nh promote death
- pharm honed extort
That should put people off.
P.S. I also like a piece of raw garlic or ginger.
We use a cough syrup made by (sorry! I originally wrote weleda, which is wrong, it's made by uriel) called Plantain and Spruce. It has some homeopathics in it. My daughter always swears it is more effective than what you would buy in a pharmacy. They also make a salve to rub on the chest that helps, I believe it also has homeopathics in it.
I've also made a syrup that uses crushed garlic, crushed ginger, raw honey, lemon juice, maybe turmeric plus black pepper, can't remember if maybe there was ACV or anything else. You mix it all and let it sit for a week or so. Potent and helps!
I well remember when LSU's Jamarcus Russell became the #1 pick in the NFL draft. And promptly destroyed his career because of his addiction to something called "Purple Drank" -- a mixture of high-potency, codeine-laced cough syrup, with Jolly Ranchers dissolved in it. I bring that up when people ask me about commercial cough syrups.
I had a BAD reaction to cough medicine one time, I felt totally loopy and like I was on another planet. My kids asked me a question and I remember looking at their faces thinking "they're expecting an answer. I better come up with something." It was AWFUL.
It said on the bottle that you could take it every 4-6 hours so I was taking it only at bedtime thinking surely it would be out of my system by the morning . . .kept taking it because the cough was so bad it was keeping me awake. But it was not out of my system . . . it turns out I'm a "slow processer."
After I stopped it was days before it was out of my system. A friend said "well yeah, the generic of robitussin is what the college kids take to get high" and to this day I wonder why anyone would seek out that feeling because it was so terrible.
Please share about the artist who paints these lovely illustrations? Is this you?
I wonder what the definition of an "ordinary drinking glass" might be?
4 oz ?
6 oz ?
8 oz ?
Might be be quite a bit of honey; but, based upon the ingredients, I would suppose the concoction could last a long time.
EDIT: Seeing it defined more like 12 oz (or more!) online.
I looked up original sizes of the famous Ball corporation glass canning jars since they’ve been around since the 1800s and seem a likely candidate. Researched cough syrup in ball glass jars and it said either 8 or 16 oz, most likely 8. For boiling the lemon, common sense I think would be ‘enough to cover’. I’m going to try it!
Great sleuthing!
And the mason jars have the perfect lids to keep it.
If I made it, I was going to use the apple cider vinegar to skip having to boil.
Thanks for the information!
I wonder if you can use a glass jar with lid, I do that for my other concoctions, because it may take time to use up the entire 12 oz
Yes, a mason jar.
See other reply above.
See my reply to Gwyneth :)
Too bad generations are getting further away from a remedy that is safe and effective and closer to pharmaceuticals that are just the opposite. No wonder I'm seeing fewer and fewer bees!
If using apple cider vinegar (acv), would we just boil the thyme (no vinegar), then mix the vinegar, honey, and a splash of the thyme water?
"Boil the lemon slowly for ten minutes with the thyme in the same water. The simmer softens the rind and extracts the lemon juice, and it draws the thymol and volatile oils out of the thyme into the water. Fish out the thyme sprig (or strain if using dried) and discard. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into an ordinary drinking glass. Add a splash of the thyme-infused water. Fill the rest of the glass with honey. Stir well.
If lemons are not available, use two tablespoons of apple-cider vinegar in place of the lemon juice. The vinegar variant is well-attested in the folk record."
You write: "Clostridium botulinum spores can be present in raw honey." Is pasteurized honey safe for children under one year of age?
Also, is raw honey more efficacious as a medicinal agent than pasteurized honey?
Does the honey need to be raw honey, or is processed honey OK?
Raw. The other stuff has all the goodness taken out of it. Just like pasteurized milk...basically coloured water with chemical additives to put back what nature had already thought if.
It costs a bit more but oh so worth it.
Many thanks!