4-page letter to a sister suggesting a home remedy for asthma and advising if she “got the dropsy of the heart,” to go to the Invalid Hotel to be cured. The letter is undated, but other items in the group are dated ca. 1895. 

She writes about the causes and physiological signs of dropsy and mentions a few successful treatment cases—she doesn’t mention her source, copying the text as if it were direct advice, though her idiosyncrasies in writing mechanics, especially capitalization, give her away. The first part of her letter repeats a recipe found in Dr. Chase’s Recipes. The content on pages 2-4 can be found in The People’s Common Sense Medical Advisor (pages 423-424 of the 1895 edition), a thick handbook of popular medicine distributed for free by Dr. Ray Pierce, founder of the “Invalid Hotel” and “World Dispensary Medical Association.” First published around 1875, the book was printed into the 1930s, reaching a 100th edition and boasting millions of copies in circulation.

[with] eight manuscript copies of home remedies for health and cosmetic concerns, including bad breath, sores, smelly feet, dark and excessive hair

(1) On diary scrap page dated 1894-1895: Hair restorative with oride (sic) bismuth, spermaceti, hogs lard; Dry salt in a horse’s mouth will cure colic
(2) For coughs: motherwort, hoarhound, licorice root, [boneset?]; for teeth & gums, myrrh
(3) To use on bad sores: “Acid of Boric”, “Acid of Calboic”, “Hy-drogen of Dioxide” (peroxide)
(4) Cough medicine: hoarhound tea, gum arabic, lemon & honey
(5) Remedy for Hydrophobia: raw asparagus “cured in any stage of canine madness…” “Disinfectant for rooms (?), meat & fish…”
(6) Assorted remedies: boric acid for smelly feet, bathed in alum, merino hose sprinkled with talc; for red nose, ammonia; hydrogen peroxide for bleaching hair. Notes on verso: “Read Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon…” [etc]
(7) “Bromo Chloralum in a little water for the breath… Electrolysis permanently removes superfluous hair and leaves no trace the current destroys the root. John Woodbury… taken from the Delineator”
(8) On a sliver of lined paper: “In one gallon of hard cider throw two handfuls of iron nails, take a wine glass of this before each meal. Paint the right side twice a week with a generous coat of Iodine for liver, one pound soap to one gallon of water and two quarts [kerroden? Kerosene?]”

[and] three printed clippings for dandruff and urinary concerns:

(1) Ad for “Warner’s Safe Cure” for “Gravel”
(2) Another Warner’s ad for “Bladder Troubles”
(3) “Grandma’s Cure for Dandruff”

TRANSCRIPTION OF LETTER (standardized)

Dear sister Sophia, try this receipt
It's only for the asthma…

A lady cured herself of asthma by using for common drink a tea made of leaves of common chestnut, which had fallen from the tree in autumn:
Sweetened well and continued its use for 2 or 3 months.
She used it for a month at first.
And it returned. When she continued its use for 2 months: and 10 years have elapsed without its return.
It is certainly safe as well as simple, and of easy trial.

..  ..  ..  ..

Sophia If you have got the dropsy of the heart, I advise you to get some thing to purify your blood or go to the Invalid Hotell to be cured. There was a man aged 68 years old cured by 3 months treatment he had the disease 2 years at times he could scarcely breathe, his heart troubled him so,
Dropsy is not, therefore, of itself a disease, but only the symptom of a morbid condition of the blood, kidneys, liver or heart,
Thus disease of the valves of the heart, may obstruct the free flow of blood and thus retard its free circulation. In consequence, the pulse grows small and weak, and the patient can-not exercise or labor as usual, and finally the lower limbs begin to swell. Then the face and body, the skin looks dusky, the appetite is impaired, the kidneys become diseased, there is difficulty and breathing, and the patient, it is said, dies of dropsy. 
But it is not so.
Yet dropsy was the result of a disease of the heart, which retarded the circulation and enfeebled the system, and which was actually the primary cause of death,
Treatment. Dropsy being a symptom of various morbid conditions existing in the system, any treatment to be radically beneficial must, therefore, have reference to the diseased conditions upon which the dropsical effusion, in each individual case, depends. These are so various and frequently so obscure as to require the best diagnostic skill possessed by the experienced specialist to detect them. There are, however, a few general principles which are applicable to the treatment of nearly all cases of dropsy. Nutritious diet, frequent alkaline baths are of the greatest importance.

This man had been under the treatment of several eminent general practitioners of medicine in Canada, but found no relief. They was unable to discover the real cause of his ailment, but to the specialist who has charge of this class of diseases at our institution and who [annually]  examines and treats hundreds of such causes, it was at once apparent that the dropsy was caused from a weakened condition of the heart, which rendered it unable to perform its functions, he was put upon a tonic and alternative course of treatment, which also embraced the use of such medicines as have been found to exert a specific tonic action upon the muscular tissues of the heart, he improved so rapidly that in less than 2 months he was able to lie down and sleep soundly all night, the bloating disappeared, his strength improved, & in three months more he was discharged perfectly cured.