Apple, Carrot, Grape, Lemon, Red Gooseberry and Tomato are the best home remedies we could find for someone afflicted with LIVER PROBLEMS.

Please read the descriptions below and see if this is the right home remedy for you.

Remember, these home remedies are not meant to be a replacement for your family doctor, please consult your doctor before trying any home remedy.

_Apple._

It is hardly possible to take up any newspaper or magazine now a days
without happening on advertisements of patent medicines whose chief
recommendation is that they “contain phosphorus.” They are generally
very expensive, but the reader is assured that they are worth ten times
the price asked on account of their wonderful properties as nerve and
brain foods. The proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish
like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in
advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous
exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer
from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his
money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing
drugs about whose properties and effects he knows absolutely nothing.
How much simpler, cheaper, and more enjoyable to eat apples!

The apple contains a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other
fruit or vegetable. For this reason it is an invaluable nerve and brain
food. Sufferers from nerve and brain exhaustion should eat at least two
apples _at the beginning of each meal_. At the same time they should
avoid tea and coffee, and supply their place with barley water or bran
tea flavoured with lemon juice, or even apple tea.

Apples are also invaluable to sufferers from the stone or calculus. It
has been observed that in cider countries where the natural unsweetened
cider is the common beverage, cases of stone are practically unknown.
Food-reformers do not deduce from this that the drinking of cider is to
be recommended, but that even better results may be obtained from eating
the fresh, ripe fruit.

Apples periodically appear upon the tables of carnivorous feeders in the
form of apple sauce. This accompanies bilious dishes like roast pork and
roast goose. The cook who set this fashion was evidently acquainted with
the action of the fruit upon the liver. All sufferers from sluggish
livers should eat apples.

Apples will afford much relief to sufferers from gout. The malic acid
contained in them neutralises the chalky matter which causes the gouty
patient’s sufferings.

Apples, when eaten ripe and without the addition of sugar, diminish
acidity in the stomach. Certain vegetable salts are converted into
alkaline carbonates, and thus correct the acidity.

An old remedy for weak or inflamed eyes is an apple poultice. I am told
that in Lancashire they use rotten apples for this purpose, but
personally I should prefer them sound.

A good remedy for a sore or relaxed throat is to take a raw ripe apple
and scrape it to a fine pulp with a silver teaspoon. Eat this pulp by
the spoonful, very slowly, holding it against the back of the throat as
long as possible before swallowing.

A diet consisting chiefly of apples has been found an excellent cure for
inebriety. Health and strength may be fully maintained upon fine
wholemeal unleavened bread, pure dairy or nut butter, and apples.

Apple water or apple tea is an excellent drink for fever patients.

Apples possess tonic properties and provoke appetite for food. Hence the
old-fashioned custom of eating an apple before dinner.

_Apple Tea._

The following are two good recipes for apple tea:– (1) Take 2 sound
apples, wash, but do not peel, and cut into thin slices. Add some strips
of lemon rind. Pour on 1 pint of boiling water (distilled). Strain when
cold. (2) Bake 2 apples. Pour over them 1 pint boiling water. Strain
when cold.

_Carrot._

Carrots are strongly antiseptic. They are said to be mentally
invigorating and nerve restoring. They have the reputation of being very
indigestible on account of the fact that they are generally boiled, not
steamed. When used medicinally it is best to take the fresh, raw juice.
This is easily obtained by grating the carrot finely on a common penny
bread grater, and straining and pressing the pulp thus obtained.

Raw carrot juice, or a raw carrot eaten fasting, will expel worms. The
cooked carrot is useless for this purpose.

A poultice of fresh carrot pulp will heal ulcers.

Fresh carrot juice is also good for consumptives on account of the large
amount of sugar it contains.

Carrots are very good for gouty subjects and for derangements of the
liver.

_Grape._

The special value of the grape lies in the fact that it is a very quick
repairer of bodily waste, the grape sugar being taken immediately into
the circulation without previous digestion. For this reason is grape
juice the best possible food for fever patients, consumptives, and all
who are in a weak and debilitated condition. The grapes should be well
chewed, the juice and pulp swallowed, and the skin and stones rejected.

In countries where the grape cure is practised, consumptive patients are
fed on the sweeter varieties of grape, while those troubled with liver
complaints, acid gout, or other effects of over-feeding, take the less
sweet kinds.

Dr. Fernie deprecates the use of grapes for the ordinary gouty or
rheumatic patient, but with all due deference to that learned authority,
I do not believe the fruit exists that is not beneficial to the gouty
person. One of the most gouty and rheumatic people I know, a vegetarian
who certainly never over-feeds himself, derives great benefit from a few
days’ almost exclusive diet of grapes.

Cream of tartar, a potash salt obtained from the crust formed upon
bottles and casks by grape juice when it is undergoing fermentation in
the process of becoming wine, is often used as a medicine. It has been
cited as an infallible specific in cases of smallpox, but I do not
recommend its use, as it probably gets contaminated with other
substances during the process of manufacture. In any case its value
cannot be compared with the fresh, ripe fruit. I have little doubt but
that an exclusive diet of grapes, combined with warmth, proper bathing,
and the absence of drugs, would suffice to cure the most malignant case
of smallpox.

Sufferers from malaria may use grapes with great benefit. For this
purpose the grapes, with the skins and stones, should be well pounded in
a mortar and allowed to stand for three hours. The juice should then be
strained off and taken. Or persons with good teeth may eat the grapes,
including the skins and stones, if they thoroughly macerate the latter.

In the absence of fresh grapes raisin-tea is a restoring and nourishing
drink. Dr. Fernie notes that it is of the same proteid value as milk, if
made in the proportions given below. It is much more easily digested
than milk, and therefore of great use in gastric complaints. Sufferers
from chronic gastritis could not do better than make raisin-tea their
sole drink, and bananas their only food for a time.

_Raisin Tea._

To make raisin-tea, take half a pound of good raisins and wash well, but
quickly, in lukewarm water. Cut up roughly and put into the
old-fashioned beef-tea jar with a quart of _distilled_ or boiled and
filtered _rain_ water. Cook for four hours, or until the liquid is
reduced to 1 pint. Scald a fine hair sieve and press through it all
except the skins and stones. If desired a little lemon juice may be
added.

_Gooseberry._

The juice of green gooseberries “cureth all inflammations,” while the
red gooseberry is good for bilious subjects. But it has been said that
gooseberries are not good for melancholy persons.

Gooseberries are an excellent “spring medicine.”

_Lemon._

Lemons are invaluable in cases of gout, malaria, rheumatism, and scurvy.
They are also useful in fevers and liver complaints.

I have found the juice of one lemon taken in a little hot water remove
dizzy feelings in the head, accompanied by specks and lights dancing
before the eyes, consequent upon the liver being out of order, in half
an hour.

The juice of a lemon in hot water may be taken night and morning with
advantage by sufferers from rheumatism. In the “lemon cure” for gout and
rheumatism, the patients begin with one lemon per day and increase the
quantity until they arrive at a dozen or more. But I think this is
carrying it to excess. Dr. Fernie recommends the juice of one lemon
mixed with an equal proportion of hot water, to be taken pretty
frequently, in cases of rheumatic fever.

A prescription for malaria, given in the _Lancet_, is the following:
“Take a full-sized lemon, cut it in thin transverse slices, rind and
all, boil these down in an earthenware jar containing a pint and a half
of water, until the decoction is reduced to half a pint. Let this cool
on the window-sill overnight, and drink it off in the morning.”

A Florentine doctor discovered that fresh lemon juice will alleviate
the pain of cancerous ulceration of the tongue. His patient sucked
slices of lemon.

A German doctor found that fresh lemon juice kills the diptheria
bacillus, and advises a gargle of diluted lemon juice to diptheric
patients. Such a gargle is excellent for sore throat.

Dr. Fernie recommends lemon juice for nervous palpitation of the heart.

Lemon juice rubbed on to corns will eventually do away with them, and if
applied to unbroken chilblains will effect a cure.

Lemon juice is also an old remedy for the removal of freckles and
blackheads from the face. It should be rubbed in at bedtime, after
washing with warm water.

_Tomato._

The tomato, according to an American physician, is one of the most
powerful _deobstruents_ (remover of disease particles, and opener of the
natural channels of the body) of the _materia medica_. It should be used
in all affections of the liver, etc., where calomel is indicated.

The superstition that tomatoes are a cause of cancer is absolutely
without foundation. Vegetarian cancer patients who have recovered after
being given up as “hopeless” by the orthodox faculty eat tomatoes
freely. Another belief, strongly supported by some otherwise “advanced”
scientific men, is that tomatoes are bad for those who suffer from a
tendency to gout, or uric acid disease. But this has been contradicted
by others. The evil agency in the tomato is supposed to be the oxalic
salt which it undoubtedly contains. But it has been shown by experiment
how certain chemical compounds as obtained from plants act quite
differently to the same compounds artificially prepared in the
laboratory. So that the contention of those who assert that the tomato
is not only harmless, but even beneficial to gouty subjects, is not
unreasonable. Speaking from experience, I can only say that one of the
goutiest subjects I know eats tomatoes nearly every day of his life, and
continues to progress rapidly towards health.

A tomato poultice is said to cleanse foul ulcers, and promote their
healing. It should be renewed frequently, and applied hot.