Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
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This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Peach
THE Apple of Persia is our Peach (Amygdalus Persica), which grows on a tree whereof the young branches, leaves, and flowers possess more medicinal properties than the fruit. After being macerated in water they yield a volatile oil which is chemically identical with that of the bitter almond. The flowers are laxative, and have been used instead of manna. The fruit is wholesome, sub-acid, and luscious, seldom disagreeing if eaten ripe, and sound. Its quantity of sugar is but small, whilst the skin is indigestible. The leaves possess some of the properties of prussic acid, and must be only employed medicinally, and with caution. A syrup of Peach flowers was formerly made officinal by apothecaries. For the colic caused by gravel, Peachflower tea will allay the pain. Gerarde advises that "a strong infusion of Peach flowers doth singularly well purge the belly, and yet without grief, or trouble, -two tablespoonfuls for a dose."
Peach pie, owing to the abundance of this fruit, is as common fare in an American farmhouse as is apple pie in an English homestead. Our notable King John died at Swinestead Abbey from a surfeit of Peaches, and new ale. The kernels of this fruit, when it is crushed, yield likewise an oil similar to that of bitter almonds, which has proved poisonous to children, also to pet animals on their cracking a Peach stone. In Sicily there is a belief that anyone afflicted with goitre who eats a Peach on the night of St. John, or the Ascension Eve, will be cured, provided only that the Peach tree begins to perish at the same time. Thackeray one day at dessert was taken to task by a colleague of his on the Punch staff, Angus B. Reach, whom he addressed as Mr. Reach instead of as (Scotticé) Mr. Re-ack. With ready humour Thackeray replied, "Be good enough, Mr. Re-ack, to pass me a Pe-ack." As containing very little sugar, Peaches are an allowable, and refreshing fruit for diabetic sufferers. Peach-water is a flavouring extract used in cookery, being obtained from the fresh leaves of the tree by bruising them, and mixing the pulp with water, and distilling it. If made in this way it retains the flavour of bitter almonds, and will serve to relieve the nausea of a qualmish stomach when carefully administered. Again, home-made Peach wine, brewed from the sweetened juice of mashed ripe Peaches, together with some of the leaves, is excellent for soothing an irritable stomach in a sensitive weakly person liable to sickness after food; a little cinnamon, and vanilla are added in the making. Take a hundred thoroughly ripe Peaches, skin them, and remove the stones; mash up the fruit in an earthenware dish, and add a pint of water sweetened, with some well-flavoured honey; pass it through the sieve, and press out the pulp thoroughly; pour all the liquid into an earthenware pitcher; add four pounds of sugar, a quarter of a pound of Peach leaves, a little cinnamon, a little vanilla, and as much in quantity of good white wine as there is of Peach-juice. Allow it to ferment, covering the pitcher well. When the liquid is thoroughly settled, filter, and put it into bottles. Some persons add a bottle of Eau-de-Vie to the mixture, but this is not necessary. The Peach wine made in this way, besides being very agreeable to the taste, is an excellent stomachic, with sedative virtues because of the soupçon of weak prussic acid in the leaves; it will admirably suit a delicate sensitive digestion. Wine of Plums, or of Apricots, may be brewed in a like manner, except that as these fruits are sweeter than the Peach, less sugar need be used. Again, Ratafias, of bitter Almonds, because of the same inherent principle, make a most useful culinary ingredient for puddings, or other plain dishes to suit a qualmish stomach inclined to sickness. Thus: "Put a pint of milk into a basin; add to it two tablespoonfuls of fine sugar, a pinch of salt, and six or seven drops of essence of Ratafias, or of bitter Almonds; beat six eggs for two, or three minutes, and mix them with the milk; pour into a well-buttered mould, and steam for an hour." Peach brandy is a spirituous liquor distilled from the fermented juice of the Peach. For delicate invalids whose appetite must be coaxed, Peach foam is a simple tempting nicety. "Skin, and cut into quarters, three or four choice, and very ripe Peaches, so that when done there shall be a cupful; put them into a basin with half a cupful of powdered sugar, and the white of one egg; beat this mixture with a fork for half an hour, when it will have become a thick, perfectly smooth, velvety cream, with a delightful Peach flavour, and so innocent that it may be eaten almost ad libitum." For making Peach jam, thoroughly ripe and sound autumn fruit should be used, as having the best flavour, and most perfume; a few of the stones should be broken, and their kernels, when blanched, be added to the jam, first passed through a hair sieve.
PEAR, (See FRUITS).
PEAS, (See BEANS).
THE pulses, which include Peas, Beans, and Lentils, have been well described as "the poor man's beef," because of their richness in nitrogenous proteids. They specially acquire this property
The peach flesh here is harmless, but nearly every preparation on the page depends on peach leaves, peach kernels or bitter-almond essence for its effect — and that effect is a measured dose of cyanide. The author says so himself, calling it a "soupçon of weak prussic acid," and treats it as the medicinal virtue of the dish.
- The hinge: peach leaves are cyanogenicPeach leaves contain cyanogenic glycosides (chiefly prunasin; amygdalin is the kernel's), which release hydrogen cyanide when the leaf tissue is crushed and wetted — exactly the maceration the text describes. A quarter of a pound of leaves steeped in a fermenting must is not a flavouring quantity and there is no way to know how much cyanide ends up in the bottle.
- Peach-water and "essence of Ratafias"Both are described as retaining the flavour of bitter almonds because both carry the same compound. Genuine bitter almond oil is toxic until the hydrocyanic acid is stripped from it; the home-bruised-and-distilled leaf water in this entry has had nothing stripped from it at all.
- Broken kernels in the jamThe jam instruction deliberately adds the blanched kernels from broken stones, the part of the fruit the same page says has poisoned children and pets who cracked a stone open. The contradiction is in the original, not in the reading of it.
- The peach wine is not a beverage recipeA hundred peaches, four pounds of sugar, an equal volume of white wine and an uncontrolled fermentation in a covered earthenware pitcher gives no gravity, no temperature, no time and no sanitation. Its stated therapeutic action is the cyanide, not the alcohol.
- Peach brandyDistilling fermented fruit juice at home is illegal without a licence in the UK, the US and most other jurisdictions, and distilling a wash made with peach leaves would concentrate the volatile toxin along with the spirit.
- Peach foamSetting the leaves aside, this one rests on a raw egg white beaten into fruit and served, uncooked, specifically to invalids and convalescents — the group least able to tolerate a salmonella exposure. Use a current recipe if you want a fruit fool.
- The medical claimsPeach-flower tea does not treat kidney gravel, peaches do not cure goitre on St John's Eve, and peaches are not notably low in sugar — a medium peach carries roughly 13 g. Nothing here should inform how anyone eats or is treated.
This comes from W. T. Fernie's Meals Medicinal (1905), a late, eccentric attempt to fuse Victorian dietetics with the older herbal tradition — which is why a page filed under a single fruit wanders from Gerard's Herball of 1597 to a Punch-table pun of Thackeray's to a Sicilian folk cure. The plant is Prunus persica, called Amygdalus persica by earlier botanists and "the Apple of Persia" because Europe received it by way of Persia, though it originated in China. Fernie's interest in the leaves and kernels rather than the fruit reflects a real pharmacy of the period: syrup of peach blossom was once officinal, and bitter-almond and peach-leaf waters were standard flavourings and sedatives precisely because their active principle, hydrocyanic acid, depresses the stomach — a virtue in a text written for "qualmish" digestions and a hazard by any modern reckoning. The story that King John died at Swineshead Abbey of a surfeit of peaches and new ale is traditional rather than documented; dysentery is the usual modern explanation.