Thousands of recipes from the ingenious to the horrific are collected in these pages, representing the cutting edge of science and technology -- in 1914. Poison antidotes, pyrotechnics, cosmetics, fireproofing techniques, cleaning formulas, photography, and spirits are just a small sampling of the subjects covered. You will learn to clean pearls by baking them inside a loaf of bread, or how to fix broken porcelain with glue extracted from a freshly dissected snail. You will catch a glimpse of a world on the brink of the Great War, when house keepers needed to detect the presence of formaldehyde in their milk or the ability to save rancid butter. There are instructions for turning plate glass into mirrors, for writing with invisible ink or building a solid floor out of paper. Not only will you see history more vividly than you've ever seen it before -- you can recreate it!