MAGIC BOOK OF 300 YEARS AGO CONTAINS WISDOM FOR ALL

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6808, 11 January 1929, Page 12

MAGIC BOOK OF 300 YEARS AGO CONTAINS WISDOM FOR ALL

SOLUTION FOR EVERY PROBLEM. A magic book 300 years old is kept by a little woman in Brook street, London. Its faded pages tell liow to woo beauty, euro toothache, cook dinners, and do a thousand other useful things. There is a Cornish village that had such faith in the medical wisdom of the book that whenever a villager was ill a letter was sent describing the symptoms to the little woman in Brook street. .She would look up a suitable remedy, and send a postcard by return. And it is said that in that village the freedom from gout, sciatica, lumbago, and other ills which the oldest inhabitants are heir to is simply astonishing.

Miss Charlotte Bond is the owner of the book, which she produced at Westminster County Court during the hearing of a case. Judge Turner then quoted a remedy for toothache by the application of "a handful of daisy roots,” suitably treated. The book contains all the “virtues which ought to be in the complete woman,” and it is dedicated to Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, by “a true admirer of her noble virtues.” Turn to it in almost any difficulty and a solution will bd found. Those perturbed at the prospect of baldness, for instance, arc supplied with a recipe for a mixture which “maketh the hair breed exceedingly.” Dentists’ bills, it is claimed, will be saved if the following methods of extracting teeth “without pain” is adopted:—“Take some of the elder tree or the apples off oak trees and with either of them rub the teeth and gums and it will loosen them so you may take them out.” Miss Bond, who is a “distiller” of cosmetics, has found some wonderful face preparations in the book, which has a large section on “Conceited Secrets”—distillations, perfumes, and so on. “Three hundred years ago women used to make their own beauty preparations, which were handed down as closely guarded secrets from mother to daughter,” Miss Bond said; “They were made in the still room in those days. Among these conceited secrets was a concoction of rose leaves mado moist and put on the face with muslin.”