Hedgehogs Beware!

Part of Betty Watkinson's archive is a collection of dozens of recipes which, based on the watermarking on the paper, she believed were from the early 1800s.

One of these recipes , a treatment for deafness, spelled very bad news for the poor old hedgehog. It reads as follows:

Skin a hedge-hog, take out the innards, wipe it (but not wash it), take all the fat from the inside of the skin and put into the body of the hedge-hog.

Roast it and the oil that drop may the next day be separate from the gravy.

Bottle the oil for use

Take a little bit of white cotton about as big as a large pea, twist part of it the bigness of a pin.

Dip'd in the oil, not more than one drop, put it in the ear when you go to bed

Repeat it five or six times.

I think I'll stick to olive oil!

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