Item of the Month

February 2026

Handwritten recipe for "preventing cooties" from the diary of an unknown female author, 1918. She was possibly a resident of Memphis, Tennessee. The recipe is on the first page while the rest of her diary consists of her daily domestic activities and visits from family and friends.

The recipe states, "After bathing rub inside of the underclothing with a mixture of four parts of mercurial ointment and one part of vaseline or lard."

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Text from this post is by Grace Neeley, Archivist/Librarian, Assistant Professor, Special Collections. She can be reached at gneeley@memphis.edu