About the Book
Entered according to Act of Congress in 1851 by E. Hutchinson, and published at 128 Nassau Street, New York, this is a household compendium of the sort that sold in enormous numbers before the Civil War and has almost entirely disappeared since.
Its title page is its table of contents, and the range is startling: ice creams, preserves and jellies; perfumery and essences; fancy and plain soaps; a system for the treatment of the hair; how to clean brass, marble, mahogany, cutlery and carpets; “a complete system of genuine Indian doctoring”; directions for letter writing under various circumstances; and, at the very end, the celebrated chemical washing recipe.
The medical half of this book is 1851 medicine and much of it is actively dangerous. Those pages carry a safety warning and the text is left exactly as printed, because altering it would destroy the record. The book's use of “Indian doctoring” is discussed in an editor's note.