Apple, Black Currant and Pine-apple are the best home remedies we could find for someone afflicted with a SORE THROAT.

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.

_Black Currant._

Black currant tea is one of the oldest of old-fashioned remedies for
sore throats and colds. It is made by pouring half a pint of boiling
water on to a large tablespoonful of the jelly or jam. To make the jelly
use the same recipe as for blackberry jelly.

The fresh juice pressed from the fruit is, of course, better than tea
made from the jelly, but as winter is the season of coughs and colds the
fruit is least obtainable when most needed.

_Pine-apple._

Pine-apple juice is the specific for diphtheria. This seems to have
been first brought to the notice of Europeans by the fact that negroes
living round about the swamps of Louisiana were observed to use it with
great success. A writer who records this says: “The patient should be
forced to swallow the juice. This fluid is of so pungent and corrosive a
nature that it cuts out the diphtheria mucous and causes it to
disappear.”

The above direction looks satisfactory enough on paper, and it is
eminently cheering to read of how the pine-apple juice causes the
diphtheria mucous to disappear, but anyone who knows anything about
diphtheria knows that to “force” a diphtheria patient to swallow is more
easily written about than accomplished. Fortunately I have been able to
obtain the following explicit directions from an experienced nurse and
mother:

The pine-apple should be cut up and well pounded in a mortar. The juice
must then be pressed out and strained through well-scalded muslin. The
patient’s mouth must be washed out with warm water. The juice may now be
given with a silver teaspoon. It is possible that the patient may be
quite unable to swallow any of it. If this be so, the juice will serve
as a mouth and throat wash. It will gradually dissolve the membrane, and
enable it to be scraped gently away with the spoon. The juice should be
given, and the throat scraped as far down as the nurse can reach, as
often as the patient can bear it. The time will come, sooner or later,
when the juice is swallowed. No other food should be given. The nurse
may have to work away for some hours before any juice is swallowed, but
my friend assures me that if the scraping be done gently and skilfully,
even children will bear it patiently. Only a silver or bone spoon should
be used, and, needless to say, it must be well scalded in boiling water
in the intervals of using.

It is a remarkable fact that while pine-apple juice exercises this
remarkable corrosive power upon diseased mucous, its effect upon the
most delicate, healthy membrane is absolutely harmless. I have seen
sweet pine-apple juice given to six-months-old babies as a supplement to
the mother’s milk, with excellent results.

Dr. Hillier, writing in the _Herald of Health_ in 1897, says “Sliced
pine-apples, laid in pure honey for a day or two, when used in
moderation, will relieve the human being from chronic impaction of the
bowels, reestablish peristaltic motion, and induce perfect digestion.”

“A slice of fresh pine-apple,” writes Dr. Fernie, “is about as wise a
thing as one can take by way of dessert after a substantial meal.” This
is because fresh pine-apple juice has been found to act upon animal food
in very much the same way that the gastric juice acts within the
stomach. But vegetarians should eat fresh fruit at the beginning of
meals rather than at the end.

The pine-apple is useful in all ordinary cases of sore-throat.

One pine-apple of average size should yield half a pint of juice.

Tinned or cooked pine-apple is useless for curative purposes.