I’ve been doing battle with an awful, lingering cold. I pretended I was getting better for ten days, then succumbed and spent a day laying around drinking lots of tea and taking cold remedies in hopes of shaking it.

Which got me thinking about what folks did in the days before Tylenol Cold and Mucinex.

I have a handy little book titled “Oppis Guet’s Vo Helvetia” that’s a collection of recipes and household hints from the Swiss village of Helvetia in West Virginia. There are several recipes for cold cures there including:

1. Onion Syrup – Good for croups and colds. Slice onions very thing and layer in a pan with sugar. Sit the pan in a warm oven with the door open and sweat syrup out of the onions. Take it by the teaspoon.
2. Horehound Candy – For coughs. Boil one handful of fresh horehound leaves in water and strain. To each pint of tea, had a half pound of brown sugar, and boil on the stove until it reaches the hard ball stage. Pour into a greased pan and cut into squares once it’s almost cool.
3. Cure-All – (This is my favorite.) Add a drop of lamp oil to a teaspoon of sugar. The book says, “If this didn’t work, you got well on your own.”

Based on these, sounds like I’d do fairly well to just take a teaspoonful of sugar and go to bed!

How about you–do you have any tried and true remedies for a cold?