Hysterical Water Recipe.
An entertaining find! Anyone heard of hysterical water? This is a new one for me. Ingredients include, but are not limited to: roots of lovage, mistletoe of the oak, and a quarter pound of dried millipedes.
Umm… okay.
European mistletoe was toxic. And so is the cyanide in millipedes (alive – I’m not sure about the dried variety).
An update on this post: My Twitter world friends came through! There are references to hysterical water in lists from pharmacy publications. This was used for medicinal purposes to ‘calm’ women. Well, yeah! It would knock them right out!
Thanks, Twitter world friends!
Source: The art of cookery made plain and easy, 1805
Convivial Supper 
Just… Wow. The things people do to keep women in check. But it does have two quarts of Brandy in it, so it can’t be so bad?
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Love me some of that Victorian medicine! Alcohol somehow always becomes the #1 ingredient. I’m game…
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It’s all ok, unless there’s wormwood involved, then it makes you a crazy murderer! Nevermind that the guy who killed his wife while “out of his mind” on absinthe had also consumed a ton of wine and an entire bottle of what I believe was brandy.
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Ha! Cheers to that!
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