The spasmodic stomach pains of colic are usually associated with babies, but adults too can suffer from them. Here are some old Texan baby soothers and a number of 15^th  17^th and 18^th century colic recipes. Some of them have been noted by Samuel Pepys but appears to have utilised a hare’s foot round his neck and took pills of turpentine every morning – but did not know which one was the effective remedy.

Texas remedies:
Close the windows and doors of the baby’s room and have someone smoke and keep smoking with a pipe or a cigar

Give the baby mare’s milk in small doses (this may have worked if the colic was caused by milk allergy ?)

A Recipe for colic noted by Pepys:

For the Colic and the Stone: Take lettuce, viperal, cinquefoil, hyssop, dragonwort, hartstongue, violets, dandelion, equal quantities of each and boil with a cock of a red colour. (What on earth was the cock for?)

An 18^th Century remedy

Tincture of rhubarb excellent in the colic: Take rhubarb sliced thin, two ounces;  brandy one quart – infuse cold. For some uses its best to infuse in cinnamon water. The dose: 3 or 4 ounces.

Two 19^th Century remedies

Take half a gill of good rye whiskey and a pipe full of tobacco: put the whiskey in a bottle and then smoke the tobacco and blow the smoke into the bottle, shake it up and drink it. This has cured the author of this book and many others. (Or they fell over and didn’t care perhaps)

For the bilious colic: West India rum one gill; West India molasses, one gill, hog’s lard, one gill, and the urine of a beast, one gill; simmer them together. Take one gill every half hour.