How to Drink Beer, 1725

J. Nothnagel, Man with Beer (1772), Wellcome Library

“I have not known Thirst since I have used hot Beer: Let the Weather be never so hot, and my work great, yet have I not felt Thirst as formerly... But some will say, Cold Beer is very pleasant to one that is Thirsty: I answer it is true: But pleasant things for the most part are very Dangerous. Cold Beer is pleasant when extream Thirst is in the Stomach, but what’s more dangerous to the Health? How many have you known and heard of, who by drinking a cup of Cold Beer in extream Thirst, have taken a surfeit and killed themselves? ...Therefore we must not drink cold Beer because it is pleasant, but hot beer because it is Profitable.”  

A Treatise of Warm Drink

Reminder: cold beer is pleasant but like most pleasant things it brings death. Cheers!

How to Picnic, 1387

Getty MS 27, f. 60v (1430-1440)

"The place where the assembly will be held should be a beautiful green meadow, with beautiful trees all around, well separated from one another, and a clear fountain or some running water... And they should spread out towels and cloths everywhere on the green grass, and put out various meats in great abundance according to the power of the lord. And some people should eat sitting, some standing, some resting on their elbows; and some people should drink, some should laugh, perform and tell stories and play, and in short all the festivities and delights." 

Gaston Phoebus, Livre de chasse

Picnic success checklist:
well separated trees
abundant meats
elbow resters
designated drinkers

How to Remove Wrinkles, 12th century

BL Harley 4425, f. 114r

For treating the wrinkles of old women, take a stinking iris, and extract the juice, and smear the face with that juice in the evening, and in the morning the skin will be raised, and it will crack. We treat the eruption with the aforementioned ointment which contains lily root, and by peeling off the skin, after it has been washed, it will appear very fine.  

The Trotula

Who needs Botox and chemical peels when you've got stinking iris?

How to Eat Bread, 1567

Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb. 317b 2, f. 85r (1607)

Nobles, who are bilious by nature, have both crusts removed from the bread, both the upper and lower crust. And the preeminent leaders of the church and more fastidious gourmands do likewise. So you should choose the inner part of the bread, because it provides better, more substantial, and faster nourishment than the crust. For people who are healthy but have a humid stomach, or people who want to lose weight, it is sometimes permissible to eat crusts after other foods. 

Johann Curio, De conservanda bona valetudine 

Just as you suspected: your crust-rejecting toddler is actually a bilious Renaissance lord.

How to Choose Tinted Glasses, 1653

Cornelius Meyer, Nuovi ritrovamenti (1689)

"Of Spectacles of pleasure. Simple Spectacles of blew, yellow, red or green colour, are proper to recreate the sight, and will present the objects died in like colour that the Glasses are, only those of the greene do somewhat degenerate; instead of shewing a lively colour it will represent a pale dead colour, and it is because they are not dyed greene enough, or receive not light enough for greene... all colours are not proper to Glasses to give colour..." 

William Oughtred, Mathematicall Recreations

Your choice: the spectacles of pleasure, or the shades of pallid death.

How to Survive Cold Season, 1761

Giovanni Battista Ferrari, Hesperides (1646)

Fever: To prevent catching any infectious fever, do not breathe near the face of the sick person, neither swallow your spittle while in the room. 

Cold in the Head: Pare very thin the yellow rind of an orange. Roll it up inside out and thrust a roll up each nostril.  

Cough: Drink a pint and a half of cold water lying down in bed... Or, make a hole thro' a lemon, and fill it with honey. Roast it, and catch the juice. Take a tea-spoonful of this frequently.  

The Country Gentleman, Farmer, and Housewife's Compendious Instructor 

What, you don't want to spend the winter with a cocktail garnish up your nose? Maybe you shouldn't have swallowed your spittle, my friend.

How to Make Snowballs for Dessert, 1798

Isaac Cruikshank, "Snow Balls" (1794), LWL

"Snow Balls. Pare and take out the cores of five large baking apples, and fill the holes with orange or quince marmalade. Then make some good hot paste, roll your apples in it, and make your crust of an equal thickness. Put them in a tin dripping-pan, bake them in a moderate oven, and when you take them out, make icing for them... let your icing be about a quarter of an inch thick, and set them at a good distance from the fire till they are hardened; but take care you do not let them brown. Put one in the middle of a dish, and the others round it. 

[Icing:] Take a pound of double-refined sugar pounded and sifted fine, and mix it with the whites of twenty-four eggs, in an earthen pan. Whisk them well for two or three hours till it looks white and thick." 

William Augustus Henderson, The Housekeeper's Instructor

Ring in the New Year with this festive dessert! Bonus: if you start whisking the icing at exactly 9 PM, you'll die of exhaustion before 2018.