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Since the birth of the National Health Service in 1948, we have come to expect unlimited access to doctors and hospitals and free or inexpensive medicines. For our ancestors, doctors and the remedies they prescribed were way beyond the means of most people. Little wonder then that many looked to the herbs and flowers that grew around them and to the everyday contents of the kitchen cupboard to cure their ailments.

For this book Dulcie Lewis has collected long ago medical memories, the details of home cures and ancient health superstitions. Taking common illness, medical herbs, trees and flowers one at a time in alphabetical order she faithfully reports on the remedies she has discovered and their sources.

The rich were almost more disadvantaged than the poor for they could afford medical treatment. Doctors, seeing pounds, shillings and pence signs over every rich sick bed, would spare their patient nothing: bleeding, purging, leeches, vomits and enemas were all administered.

The aim of this book, in a light-hearted and amusing way, is to open up and give a glimpse into that part of everyday life with which our ancestors coped daily - how to keep well. Meanings to names, medicines and ingredients which have long fallen from use are given and there are simple explanations of the illnesses that were feared and which, to us now, seem just so much part of history.

Author

Dulcie Lewis is the author of several local bestselling books including Kent Prives, Down the Yorkshire Pan and Curious Cures of Old Yorkshire

Softcover; A5; 252 pages