Not so very long ago the pharmacy and the pantry were one and the same. Curatives and restoratives were cooked up at home, not picked up at the drug store. It is hard for us to realize that 1914 was really the first year when a trip to the doctor made you better.

Long before scientific discoveries revealed the inner workings of penicillin, digitalis, or even aspirin, old wives and herbologists prescribed moldy bread for coughs, supplied foxglove for the faint-hearted, and urged headache sufferers to chew wintergreen leaves. But one of the most popular and widely used cures was the old-fashioned mustard plaster.

Anybody ever seen one? [If you can put one together to show them, great!]

Anybody ever even heard of one?

Here's how it was done. 1. Mustard flour was mixed into a paste. 2. The…