4 Domestic care

Despite their best efforts, everyone fell ill at some point in their lives. Although historians of medicine write a great deal about how the sick were cared for by doctors and in hospitals, in the past (as nowadays) minor complaints were diagnosed and treated at home, almost entirely without the help of medical professionals, using special diets and home-made or bought-in remedies. As with preserving health, poor families had relatively few resources for treatment. They might seek advice from neighbours or friends, or perhaps a health visitor. Those prevalent joint and respiratory ailments described earlier might respond to simple forms of treatment. Linseed or onion poultices were used to treat boils or painful joints, and hot footbaths were given as a remedy for colds. These would have been within the resources of all but the very poorest. In rural areas, ancient magical remedies, such as using snails to treat warts, persisted well into the twentieth century. Poor families might also be able to produce some simple foods aimed at helping a sick member feel better – for example, gruel, soup or egg dishes.

Better-off members of society were able to adopt more elaborate forms of domestic treatment. Medical practitioners had an indirect input into their home care through advice given in books on nursing and even diaries. The Ladies Diary and Housekeeper (1917) contained useful notes for emergencies in alphabetical order, from ‘Abdomen’ to ‘Wounds’, including what to do in cases of strangulation and how to tell if someone was dead. In cases of hysteria, the Ladies Diary recommended not sympathising with the patient, but throwing cold water in her [sic] face, then administering an anti-spasmodic draught. (Perhaps life in the Edwardian home was not as quiet as we think!) Middle-class households had more resources with which to prepare home-made remedies. For example, a well-stocked larder was a prerequisite for making the cough mixture consisting of melted butter, black treacle and lemon, which was recommended in Everywoman a Nurse (1927). The middle and upper classes could also afford to treat illnesses using special diets. Nursing manuals published between the 1890s and the 1920s provided recipes for dishes to tempt the invalid's appetite and aid recovery, including beef tea (a broth made by boiling meat in water), rice pudding and egg dishes. Brandy was given as a stimulant to the very sick. Tonic wines, fortified with quinine or iron, and red wine (perhaps because of its colour) were reputed to strengthen the blood. By the end of the century, families could purchase patent invalid foods. Cod liver oil, now given as a source of vitamin D, was recommended as a rich food which helped patients to gain weight.

All classes purchased medicines to deal with illness within the family. These medicines were self-prescribed, and were often seen as a cheap alternative to paying for a doctor's services. Despite practitioners' bitter complaints that such medicines could do little good, and might even be harmful, the market in over-the-counter medicines boomed. In the mid-nineteenth century, the British population spent about £500,000 per year on patent medicines – by 1914, this sum had increased ten-fold (Digby, 1999, p. 228). Drugs and medicines were readily available – they were sold by retail chemists (Boots the Chemist thrived in this period, building up a chain of shops), grocers, corner shops and even by mail order, and were heavily advertised in newspapers and periodicals. Over-the-counter remedies ranged from the innocuous to the extremely potent. Thomas Beecham (after whom Beecham's Powders are named) began his career selling a preparation based on aloes, ginger and soap. At the same time, chemists sold morphine preparations, and new chemical drugs such as sulphonal (a sleeping drug). As well as medicines based on orthodox medicine, homeopathic and herbal remedies were also freely available.

Medicines were marketed to reach all classes. Hoechst, one of the largest German pharmaceutical firms, was not above selling exactly the same pain-relieving drug under four different names and at four different prices. The following reading is an extract from Robert Roberts's book The Classic Slum, which gives a picture of the trade in patent remedies in a corner shop in the 1900s.