Harper's Household Handbook: A guide to easy ways of doing woman's work

by Martha McCulloch-Williams

Washing-soda: Dissolve a pound in a pint of boiling water and flush sink pipes, refrigerator drains, and set tubs with it.

Copperas (green vitriol, otherwise sulphate of iron): Dissolve a pound in a gallon of water; it will take several hours. Dilute one-half with boiling water and flush water closets, bath pipes, set bowls, and so forth. Sprinkle thus diluted over smelly earth, as in chicken runs, kennel floors, stall floors, and where garbage stands. Use liberally on garbage, in earth closets, or privies, also on standing water infested with green scum. A gallon added to a pot of whitewash gives a yellow tinge and makes the wash more sanitary.

Bluestone: Bluestone, sulphate of copper, must be dissolved in the same proportions. It is a germicide more than disinfectant, especially valuable where there have been sick animals. Dilute with four times its bulk of boiling water or mix through hot whitewash. It is staple against seed infection, as smuts and molds. The most part of garden seed sprout and grow better for wetting with the dilute solution and drying before planting.

White Vitriol: Sulphate of zinc, a powerful astringent germicide, needs care in handling. Dissolve it, four ounces to the half gallon of water, strain, and put into clean bottles. Keep dark, corked tightly. Use to clean and disinfect sores from frost bite or indolent ulcers. Dilute with five times as much tepid rain water. Use on the combs of poultry when raw from frost, also for scaly leg and the ail known as “bumble-foot.”

Bichloride of Mercury: The king among disinfectants, also one of the deadliest among poisons. Dissolve in boiling rain water, four ounces to the gallon. Let stand; it dissolves slowly. Keep in glass, tightly corked, plainly labeled “poison.” Dilute one-half for use in the sick room. But put on full strength when fighting bed bugs.

Bordeaux Mixture: Staple for spraying against molds, etc. One pound blue vitriol dissolved in five gallons rain water and added to one pound powdered unslaked lime mixed to a cream with rain water. Stir well, and strain before spraying. Dilute one-half to three-fourths; if too strong it scorches vegetation.

Kerosene Emulsion: Stir hard together in an earthen vessel a quart of buttermilk and half a gallon kerosene. Stir with wood until thick and buttery. Use full strength to paint tree trunks and hard branches in winter, but dilute at least ten times for use on green things. Mix with warm water, twenty parts to one for spraying against plant lice. For fighting red spider stir a little sulphur into the emulsion before diluting. Spray late—as near night as possible.

Bisulphide of Lime: Sure death to either animal or plant lice. Mix in equal quantity flowers of sulphur and powdered quicklime, cover two inches with boiling water, boil five hours, filling up and adding more water till there is three times the original quantity. Dilute the result, a brown smelly liquid, one hundred times for use either as wash or spray.

Against Garden Pests: Mix any arsenical powder—London purple, Scheele’s green, or Paris green—with its own bulk of flour and twice its bulk of slaked lime, and dust upon plants while damp. Good for potato beetles, squash bugs, flea bugs, grasshoppers, cut worms, and cabbage worms. Use in a powder gun or tie in a thin bag, fasten it to a long pole and shake so as to coat plants evenly.

Larkspur: Larkspur destroys lice and mites. Sow rather thick, cut when beginning to flower, dry in shade. Strip leaves and buds when full dry, powder, and keep in glass. Save stems and coarse stalks to make tea. Infuse for twelve hours, then boil for two, strain, and reduce by boiling another hour. Use in suds a cup to the quart, or in whitewash a pint to the gallon. Make an ointment by either stewing tender tips in lard or fresh butter in a water bath until the grease is well colored or by putting with it the infusion at full strength and stewing out the water. Stir in a little flowers of sulphur, a teaspoonful to the pint, for use on cattle or horses. Grease back of the ears, under the throat, and along the backbone. Grease poultry under the wings, around the neck, and on top of the head. Blow larkspur powder into the hair of dogs and cats after bathing them.