Frontier Fridays: How to Make a Mustard Plaster

How to Make a Mustard Plaster

How many people are there who really know how to make a mustard plaster? No one is a hundred at most, perhaps, and yet mustard plasters are used in every family, and physicians prescribe their application, never telling anybody how to make them, for the simple reason that doctors themselves do not know as a rule. The ordinary way is to mix the mustard with water, tempering it with a little flour, but such a plaster as this makes it simply abominable. Before it has half done it work, it begins to blister the patient, and leaves him finally with a painful flayed spot after having produced far less effect in a beneficial way than was intended. Now a mustard plaster should never make a blister at all. If a blister is wanted, there are other plasters far better than mustard for the purpose.
When you make a mustard plaster, then, use no water whatever, but mix the mustard with the white of an egg, and the result will be a plaster which will "draw" perfectly, but will not produce a blister even upon the skin of an infant, no matter how long it is allowed to remain on the part.