In the absence of fresh grapes raisin-tea is a restoring and nourishing drink. Dr. Fernie notes that it is of the same proteid value as milk, if made in the proportions given below. It is much more easily digested than milk, and therefore of great use in gastric complaints. Sufferers from chronic gastritis could not do better than make raisin-tea their sole drink, and bananas their only food for a time.
Raisin Tea.
To make raisin-tea, take half a pound of good raisins and wash well, but quickly, in lukewarm water. Cut up roughly and put into the old-fashioned beef-tea jar with a quart of distilled or boiled and filtered rain water. Cook for four hours, or until the liquid is reduced to 1 pint. Scald a fine hair sieve and press through it all except the skins and stones. If desired a little lemon juice may be added.
Gooseberry.
The juice of green gooseberries "cureth all inflammations," while the red gooseberry is good for bilious subjects. But it has been said that gooseberries are not good for melancholy persons.
Gooseberries are an excellent "spring medicine."
Lavender.
It is very much to be regretted that the nerve-soothing vegetable perfumes of our grandmothers have been superseded, for the most part, by the cheap mineral products of the laboratory. Scents really prepared from the flowers that give them their names are expensive to make, and consequently high-priced. The cheap scents are all mineral concoctions, and their use is more or less injurious. A penny-worth of dried lavender flowers in a muslin bag is even cheaper to buy, inoffensive to smell—which is more than can be said of cheap manufactured scents—and possesses medicinal properties.
Lavender flowers were formerly used for their curative virtues in all disorders of the head and nerves.
An oil, prepared by infusing the crushed lavender flowers in olive oil, is recommended for anointing palsied limbs, and at one time a spirit was prepared from lavender flowers which was known as "palsy drops."