Flower Healing

Southland Times, Issue 21264, 10 December 1930, Page 18

Flower Healing

With all the joys of outdoor life come the minor ills of sunburn, scorched and sun-tired eyes, blistered arms, necks, and even legs, and stung and bitten flesh. The toilet table and bathroom shelf begin to look more like a chemist’s shop day byday in an endeavour to find a remedy suitable for the particular worry of the moment.

There is no doubt that the ointment which heals one person often harms another. But for exceptionally delicate skins vegetable creams and lotions are nearly always safe, and the old-fashioned washes and balms of our great-grand-mothers’ time cannot be improved upon. The lovely ladies of crinoline days grew the flowers and herbs used in the preparations they made, or searched for them in woods and lanes. They made lotions from primroses and cowslips in the springtime, and from lime flowers and elder flowers in the summer, in addition to creams and unguents from most of the flowers of the garden and some of the vegetables too. Cowslip water, distilled from the blossoms, and cream made with almond oil, wax, and cowslip essence, were both used to regain the firm flesh of youth. Elderflower w-ater is still used in old-fashioned country homes in England, and there is nothing finer for bathing aching eyes or cooling a scorched face. As a foundation for powder, too, it is unequalled, and gives a velvet softness which never loses its bloom.

An old recipe says the elder flowers should be gathered when they are in full bloom, and should be crushed in a mortar before they are covered with cold rain water. The mortar should then be placed in a vessel of boiling water and brought to the boil. When it is cold it should be strained and bottled, and used generously. The recipe adds that it will make the face "exceedingly fayre.” ■ Nowadays it is easy to buy a bottle of elderflower water from

the chemist. But then milady had no one to help her preserve her charms. In the same old book there are recipes for ointments made from clarified lard and the juice of leaves and roots. Lettuce cream was then apparently more popular than cucumber, and was made ’ -• steeping the lettuce leaves in boiling water, straining them, and then squeezing out the juice, which was added drop bv drop to hot lard.