298. ROSE LIP-SALVE.
Put 8 ounces of the best olive oil into a wide-mouthed bottle, add two ounces of the small parts of alkanet-root.
Stop up the bottle, and set it in the sun; shake it often, until it be of a beautiful crimson. Now strain the oil off very clear from the roots, and add to it, in a glazed pipkin, three ounces of very fine white wax, and the same quantity of fresh clean mutton suet. Deer-suet is too brittle, and also apt to turn yellow.
Melt this by a slow fire, and perfume it when taken off, with forty drops of oil of rhodium, or of lavender. When cold, put it into small gallipots, or rather whilst in a liquid state.
The common way is to make this salve up into small cakes; in that form the colour is very apt to be impaired.
This salve never fails to cure chopped or sore lips, if applied pretty freely at bed-time, in the course of a day or two at farthest.
299. Another Method.
Beat the alkanet-root in a mortar, until its fibres are properly bruised; then tie it up in a piece of clean linen rag, and put this in a clear pipkin with the oil. When the oil has begun to boil, it will be found of a deep red. The bag is now to be taken out, pressed and thrown away, and then the other ingredients are to be added as above.
300. WHITE LIP-SALVE.
This may be made as above, except in the use of alkanet root, which is to be left out. Though called lip-salve, this composition is seldom applied to the lips; its principal use consisting in curing sore nipples, for which it is an excellent remedy.