Gardner Dexter Hiscox (–1908)

Originally printed in 1914, scanning and copyright expiration has made possible the revival of Henley’s Twentieth Century Formulas, Recipes And Processes, Containing Ten Thousand Selected Household And Workshop Formulas, Recipes, Processes And Moneymaking Methods For The Practical Use Of Manufacturers, Mechanics, Housekeepers And Home Workers. In the good old days, you could take “Henley’s” off the shelf and find directions for making:


Speculum metal – 68.21% copper, 31.79% tin. show more (Doesn’t say if it’s percent by weight or volume; all other metal alloys are listed in “parts” rather than “percent”, so I wonder if it’s a typo).


Remedy for fetid breath: 1 part potassium permanganate, 10 parts distilled water. (that would probably do it, although I wonder what color your teeth would be afterward?)


Chewing gum: 122 parts chicle, 42 parts paraffin, 4 parts balsam of Tolu, 384 parts sugar, 48 parts water. (balsam of Tolu is some sort of congealed Peruvian tree sap).


Tooth powder: Precipitated chalk 1 pound, White castile soap 1 ounce, Florentine orris 2 ounces, sugar 1 ounce, oil of wintergreen 1 ounce.


Blasting powder: chlorate of potash 1 part, chromate of potash 0.1 part, sugar 0.45 parts, yellow wax 0.09 parts. (The editor advises caution when experiment with explosives, especially nitroglycerin. The text did answer an old question I had; many of the old mining textbooks I read when I was doing environmental cleanups mentioned “giant powder” without saying what it was. It turns out to be black powder saturated with nitroglycerin).


Hair dye: nitrate of silver ½ ounce, in 3 ounces of distilled water; with a mordant of sulphuret of potassium ½ ounce in 3 ounces of distilled water.


Bedbug destroyers: the editors recommend liquid preparations, since you can pour them into cracks. 1 drachm oil of pennyroyal, turpentine 8 ounces, enough kerosene oil to make one gallon. (I’m not sure if “kerosene oil” is just kerosene or something more exotic).


Frangipanni perfume: 10 grains musk, 25 minims sandal otto, 45 minims rose otto, 30 minims orange flower otto, 3 minims vetivert otto, ½ ounce powdered orris rhizome, 30 grains vanilla, 80% alcohol 10 fluid ounces. Digest for a month. (I assume “otto” is somehow related to “attar” as in “attar of roses”. I also expect “Digest for a month” doesn’t mean internally).


And so on for 807 pages. Many of the formulas include things that would probably get you a visit from Homeland Security if you attempted to acquire them nowadays – fuming nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid, benzene, carbon disulfide. There are also a lot of obscure botanicals – the aforementioned “balsam of Tolu” and “vetivert otto”, for example, although a little googling discloses that all of these I bothered to check are available from various sites specializing in “natural” products. The book is organized by general class of substance; for example, the “tooth powder” I mentioned was just one of several pages under the heading “Dentifrices”. There is a good index, but no table of contents – thus you have to leaf through looking at chapter headings to see what might apply to your case. The most glaring flaw in reproduction is that the page setup is off by one – i.e., odd numbered pages are on the left and even numbered are on the right; this, in turn, puts the page numbers on the inside of the pages rather than the outside. The original came from the University of California library system and their imprint is still visible here and there, but doesn’t interfere with readability. Might actually be fun to mess around with some of the preparations, although I’d stay away from things like silver fulminate and hydrofluoric acid glass etching solution. show less

Readers interested in turn-of-the-century chemistry, processes, and tricks of the trade used in industry and the home at that time, might like to check out Henley’s Twentieth Century book of Recipes, Formulas and Processes, Edited by Gardner D.Hiscox.

I’ve owned the original 1907 first edition of Hiscox’s classic work for a while, and love the way my copy is discoloured and bleached by chemical splashes. Not by me, I hasten to add; but this book was used for its intended purpose! show more Whether the former owner, a James McQueen Jr. according to the bookplate, lived long and prospered because of its secrets, or in spite of them, is a different matter.

And those secrets were intended for all; as we learn in the preface:

“In compiling this book of formulas, recipes and processes, the Editor has endeavoured to meet primarily the practical requirements of the mechanic, the manufacturer, the artisan, and the housewife.”

Some of the information is innocuous enough. You can learn how your great grandmother made blackberry jam; and Celery Clam Punch or Cherry Phosphate (with real phosphoric acid, maybe the origin of cherry coke?) sound refreshing for a summer evening.

But some of the medical cures are distinctly dodgy. We worry enough today about tanning products, but Hiscox’s tan cure, made from bichloride of mercury, sounds lethal. Helpfully, he points out that:

“This is not strong enough to blister and skin the face in average cases.“

Phew, good job most folk are average. Responsibly, he adds:

“Do not forget that this last ingredient [the mercury compound] is a powerful poison and should be kept out of the reach of children and ignorant persons.“

Folk would have taken Hiscox’s Cannabis indica based cure for corns in their stride (ouch!). And concern over the pinch of cinnabar in his nail polish would be just another case of health and safety gone mad.

But surely, even by the standards of the time, Hiscox’s idea of a light-hearted party trick must have raised some eyebrows (or literally blown them off): like ‘To take boiling lead in the mouth’, ‘Biting off red hot iron’, ‘Sparks from the finger tips’. And ‘The burning banana’ doesn’t bear thinking about.
hiscox recipes formulas and processes

Some recipes were probably safe, but just sound a little icky. Like a nice pomade for sir’s hair, made from vaseline oil and beef marrow. Blue hosiery dye called for some ingredients I’ve never heard of: like 4 pounds of Guatamala and 3 pounds of Beugal Indigo; and others I have heard of: like 1 pail of urine. Hiscox also contains lots of paint and ink recipes but, disappointingly, there’s no mention of the infamous Mummy Brown.

‘Solid Alcohol’ sounds quite useful, maybe as a firelighter. I made something similar as a schoolboy, by dissolving soap in methylated spirit.

There’s nothing in Hiscox to separate the domestic from the industrial. Content is alphabetically indexed, but otherwise all mixed up. The section on glass includes industrial formulas for making different glass types and colourings in the furnace, but also includes instructions for a home-made glass grinding device.

Interestingly, Recipes, Formulas And Processes was republished through many revisions and editions into at least the 1930s. But I’m sure today there is nothing quite like it – unless we include the internet as a whole. It’s worth considering that when Hiscox was published, the welfare and commercial infrastructure we take for granted today (some of us) was much less developed or non-existent. No popping down to the mall for a ready-made solution to every task. Folk just did more of their own stuff.

And should you decide to do more of your own stuff, don’t do it from Hiscox! He’s academically interesting to browse, but clearly some of his recipes and ideas are best left well alone. show less

It's a good thing that many of the ingredients specified in this book are no longer readily available, but it makes for terrific browsing: A cough syrup is concocted from heroin, aromatic sulphuric acid, concentrated acid infusion of roses, distilled water, glycerine, and oxymel of squill.

Some of less-toxic recipes might be fun to explore--cosmetics, condiments, and so forth.

A hair-raising, horrifying and absolutely fascinating window on the 'modern' past. Dang, it's a wonder our grandparents lived long enough to reproduce!