Lavender

Lavender is a very old household remedy, used for everything from perfuming linen to cleansing the air in a sickroom. The herb contains essential oils, which give it its characteristic fragrance.  Lavender essential oil, like most essential oils, has antibiotic and antiviral properties, and it works as an anti-inflammatory and soothing agent when applied to skin injuries and burns. Inhaled, lavender's fragrance can soothe a headache away as well as calm anxieties and promote a good night's sleep.

Lavender water, either in the form of a tisane or as a hydrolate, which is a by-product of the distillation process in which lavender essential oil is produced, has many of the same healing properties as the herb's essential oil. Historically, lavender water was often used in sickrooms, both to cleanse the air and to comfort the sufferer, as described in the following snippet from Georgette Heyer's novel "Lady of Quality". Lady Annis has contracted influenza, and is being tended by her old nurse:

"Do you lie quiet now till I come back, and don't get into the high fidgets, fancying the house will fall down just because you're knocked up with all the trouble you've had, and mean to recruit your strength by staying in bed today, because it won't!" She sprinkled lavender-water lavishly over the pillow, drenched a handkerchief with it, which she tenderly wiped across Miss Wychwood's burning forehead, assured her that she would be as right as a trivet before the cat had time to lick her ear, and hurried away, first to send the page-boy scurrying down the hill with an urgent message to Dr. Tidmarsh, and then to inform Lady Wychwood, who had not yet left her room, that Miss Annis was laid up, and that she had sent for the doctor. "I don't doubt it's nothing worse than the influenza, my lady, but she's in a raging fever!" she said bluntly.