Book of Fruits and Flowers

A great book for survivalist libraries, preserving the knowledge of our ancestors. Katrina has proven we need to be prepared, and most of us do not contain the knowledge of home remedies and cures that even our great grandmothers possessed. Illustrated, this book teaches one how to prepare many remedies from fruits and flowers.

Excerpt:

To Preserve, Conserve, Candy, and in Wedges, or Dry them. To make Powders, Civet bagges, all sorts of Sugar-works, turn'd works in Sugar, Hollow, or Frutages; and to Pickell them.

And for Meat.

To make Pyes, Biscat, Maid Dishes, Marchpanes, Leeches, and Snow, Craknels, Caudels, Cakes, Broths, Fritter-stuffe, Puddings, Tarts, Syrupes, and Sallets.

For Medicines.

To make all sorts of Poultisses, and Serecloaths for any member swell'd or inflamed, Ointments, Waters for all Wounds, and Cancers, Salves for Aches, to take the Ague out of any place Burning or Scalding; For the stopping of suddain Bleeding, curing the Piles, Ulcers, Ruptures, Coughs, Consumptions, and killing of Warts, to dissolve the Stone, killing the Ring-worme, Emroids, and Dropsie, Paine in the Ears and Teeth, Deafnesse.

The Syrupe of Violets.

Take faire water, boyle it, scum it, and to every ounce of it so boyled and scummed, take six ounces of the blew of Violets, only shift them as before, nine times, and the last time take nine ounces of Violets, let them stand between times of shifting, 12 houres, keeping the liquor still on hot embers, that it may be milk warm, and no warmer; after the first shifting you must stamp and straine your last nine ounces of Violets, and put in only the juice of them, then take to every pint of this liquor thus prepared, one pound of Sugar finely beaten, boyle it, and keep it with stirring till the Sugar be all melted, which if you can, let be done before it boyle, and then boyle it up with a quick fire. This doth coole and open in a burning Ague, being dissolved in Almond milk, and taken; especially it is good for any Inflamation in Children. The Conserves are of the same effect.

The use of Conserve of Violets and Cowslips.

That of Cowslips doth marvelously strengthen the Braine, preserveth against Madnesse, against the decay of memory, stoppeth Head-ache, and most infirmities thereof; for Violets it hath the same use the Syrupe hath.

To make Paste of Violets, or any kind of Flowers.

Take your Flowers, pick them, and stamp them in an Alablaster morter, then steep them two howres in a sauser of Rose-water, after straine it, and steep a little Gum Dragon in the same water, then beat it to past, print it in your Moulds, and it will be of the very colour and tast of the Flowers, then gild them, and so you may have every Flower in his owne colour, and tast better for the mouth, then any printed colour.

Powder of Violets.

Take sweet Ireos roots one ounce, red Roses two ounces, Storax one ounce and a halfe, Cloves two drams, Marjerome one dram, Lavinder flowers one dram and a halfe, make these into powder; then take eight graines of fine Muske powdered, also put to it two ounces of Rose-water, stir them together, and put all the rest to them, and stir them halfe an hour, till the water be dryed, then set it by one day, and dry it by the fire halfe an houre, and when it is dry put it up into bagges.

A good Plaister for the Strangury.

Take Violets, and Hollyhokes, and Mercury, the leaves of these Hearbs, or the seeds of them, also the rinde of the Elderne tree, and Leydwort, of each of these a handfull, and beat them small, and seeth them in water, till halfe be consumed, and put thereto a little oyle Olive, and make thereof a plaister, and lay it to the soare and reines; also in the summer thou must make him a drink on this manner, take Saxifrage, and the leaves of Elderne, five leav'd grasse, and seath them in a pottell of staile Ale, till the halfe be wasted, then straine it, and keep it clean, and let the sick drink thereof first and last, and if you lack these hearbs because of winter, then take the roots of five-leav'd grasse, and dry them, and make thereof a powder, then take Oyster-shells, and burne them, and make powder also of them, and mingling them together, let the sick use thereof in his pottage, and drink, and it will help him.