March 31st, 1926

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Rhubarb can tone and beautify skin, put a sparkle in the eyes, and soothe jangled nerves among other things…

FROM THE ARCHIVES:Rhubarb can tone and beautify skin, put a sparkle in the eyes, and soothe jangled nerves among other things. Or so a writer using the initials GG told readers of the women's page in 1926. – JOE JOYCE

WITH THE coming of spring, rhubarb, in the shape of jam, or tart, pie or pudding, appears upon our table; and, as if in duty bound to its annual coming, all of us feel compelled to eat of it because of the marvellous power of body-refreshing it is known to hold. Through the eating of rhubarb the stomach is highly stimulated, and all the intestinal juices excited to good action. It is a natural tonic, that braces up the whole system – a general strengthening and purifying agent; and its good properties are brought out and improved by proper cooking.

Especially does rhubarb prove a good friend to the owners of a bad skin, for it has a peculiar property of tightening the relaxed and gaping pores, that yawn to receive the tiny stoppers of dirt particles ever afloat in the air, which once caught by the pores, become unsightly blackheads a little later. If the blackheads be already present in unwelcome arrays of ugliness, the astringent rhubarb-influence is able to expel them, causing a rapid increase of the skin action. Thus it becomes a sure complexion cleanser and, as a consequence, a beauty-giver.

Through stimulation of the liver, and by the bestowing of restored tone to that organ, this good food-medicine can remove the dull look from the eyes, take the yellow tinge from the flabby eyeballs, which it renders firm again, and destroy the baggy, livid appearance that a slow-working liver is wont to bring under the lower eyelid. Rhubarb juice made palatable and sweet would also cool the system and soothe into restfulness excited nerves.

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For a gratefully acid and most cooling summer drink can be very quickly made when this good garden gift is especially plentiful by infusing a couple of well-crushed raw stalks in a jugful of boiling water, which is then sweetened to taste and left to cool. This is rhubarb tea. The Turks and the Persians – who are most noted for the excellence of their snowy, foaming beverage, the sherbet sold in all bazaars and found so cunningly commingled, so gratefully sweet and yet acidulated – could tell of rhubarb gardens rifled for the sherbet making, did they care to speak their secrets. Rheumatism is an ailment not greatly prevalent in the sherbet lands; and, in spite of our damp, insular climate, it would be less of a curse here if our people would only make closer acquaintance with rhubarb and use it more.

Various are the methods of rhubarb cookery. A favourite dish with children are the stalks well sweetened, stewed with a little water, and flavoured with the peel of a lemon. Orange peel is a good flavouring for it, and cloves with rhubarb are found excellent. Rhubarb juice extracted, mingled bulk for bulk with water, and made into syrup, using therefor a pound of white sugar to each pint, makes a drink foundation of the best teetotal kind.


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