Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 48

BITES AND STINGS OF INSECTS.--Wash with a solution of ammonia water.

BITES OF MAD DOGS.--Apply caustic potash at once to the wound, and give enough whiskey to cause sleep.

BURNS.--Make a paste of common baking soda and water, and apply it promptly to the burn. It will quickly check the pain and inflammation.

COLD ON CHEST.--A flannel rag wrung out in boiling water and sprinkled with turpentine, laid on the chest, gives the greatest relief.

COUGH.--Boil one ounce of flaxseed in a pint of water, strain, and add a little honey, one ounce of rock candy, and the juice of three lemons. Mix and boil well. Drink as hot as possible.

SPRAINED ANKLE OR WRIST.--Wash the ankle very frequently with cold salt and water, which is far better than warm vinegar or decoction of herbs. Keep the foot as cool as possible to prevent inflammation, and sit with it elevated on a high cus.h.i.+on. Live on low diet, and take every morning some cooling medicine, such as Epsom salts. It cures in a few days.

CHILBLAINS, SPRAINS, ETC.--One raw egg well beaten, half a pint of vinegar, one ounce spirits of turpentine, a quarter of an ounce of spirits of wine, a quarter of an ounce of camphor. These ingredients to be beaten together, then put in a bottle and shaken for ten minutes, after which, to be corked down tightly to exclude the air. In half an hour it is fit for use. To be well rubbed in, two, three, or four times a day. For rheumatism in the head, to be rubbed at the back of the neck and behind the ears. In chilblains this remedy is to be used before they are broken. {349}

HOW TO REMOVE SUPERFLUOUS HAIR.--Sulphuret of a.r.s.enic, one ounce; Quicklime, one ounce; Prepared Lard, one ounce; White Wax, one ounce. Melt the Wax, add the Lard. When nearly cold, stir in the other ingredients.

Apply to the superfluous hair, allowing it to remain on from five to ten minutes; use a table-knife to shave off the hair; then wash with soap and warm water.

DYSPEPSIA CURE.--Powdered Rhubarb, two drachms; Bicarbonate of Sodium, six drachms; Fluid Extract of Gentian, three drachms; Peppermint Water, seven and a half ounces. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful half an hour before meals.

FOR NEURALGIA.--Tincture of Belladonna, one ounce; Tincture of Camphor, one ounce; Tincture of Arnica, one ounce; Tincture of Opium, one ounce. Mix them. Apply over the seat of the pain, and give ten to twenty drops in sweetened water every two hours.

FOR COUGHS, COLDS, ETC.--Syrup of Morphia, three ounces; Syrup of Tar, three and a half ounces; Chloroform, one troy ounce; Glycerine, one troy ounce. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful three or four times a day.

TO CURE HIVES.--Compound syrup of Squill, U. S., three ounces; Syrup of Ipecac, U. S., one ounce. Mix them. Dose, a teaspoonful.

TO CURE SICK HEADACHE.--Gather sumach leaves in the summer, and spread them in the sun a few days to dry. Then powder them fine, and smoke, morning and evening for two weeks, also whenever there are symptoms of approaching headache. Use a new clay pipe. If these directions are adhered to, this medicine will surely effect a permanent cure.

WHOOPING COUGH.--Dissolve a scruple of salt of tartar in a gill of water; add to it ten grains of cochineal; sweeten it with sugar. Give to an infant a quarter teaspoonful four times a day; two years old, one-half teaspoonful; from four years, a tablespoonful. Great care is required in the administration of medicines to infants. We can a.s.sure paternal inquirers that the foregoing may be depended upon.

CUT OR BRUISE.--Apply the moist surface of the inside coating or skin of the sh.e.l.l of a raw egg. It will adhere of itself, leave no scar, and heal without pain.

DISINFECTANT.--Chloride of lime should be scattered at least once a week under sinks and wherever sewer gas is likely to penetrate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE YOUNG DOCTOR.]

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COSTIVENESS.--Common charcoal is highly recommended for costiveness. It may be taken in tea- or tablespoonful, or even larger doses, according to the exigencies of the case, mixed with mola.s.ses, repeating it as often as necessary. Bathe the bowels with pepper and vinegar. Or take two ounces of rhubarb, add one ounce of rust of iron, infuse in one quart of wine. Half a winegla.s.sful every morning. Or take pulverized blood root, one drachm, pulverized rhubarb, one drachm, castile soap, two scruples. Mix. and roll into thirty-two pills. Take one, morning and night. By following these directions it may perhaps save you from a severe attack of the piles, or some other kindred disease.

TO CURE DEAFNESS.--Obtain pure pickerel oil, and apply four drops morning and evening to the ear. Great care should be taken to obtain oil that is perfectly pure.

DEAFNESS.--Take three drops of sheep's gall, warm, and drop it into the ear on going to bed. The ear must be syringed with warm soap and water in the morning. The gall must be applied for three successive nights. It is only efficacious when the deafness is produced by cold. The most convenient way of warming the gall is by holding it in a silver spoon over the flame of a light. The above remedy has been frequently tried with perfect success.

GOUT.--This is Col. Birch's recipe for rheumatic gout or acute rheumatism, commonly called in England the "Chelsea Pensioner." Half an ounce of nitre (saltpetre), half an ounce of sulphur, half an ounce of flour of mustard, half an ounce of Turkey rhubarb, quarter of an ounce of powdered guaic.u.m.

Mix, and take a teaspoonful every other night for three nights, and omit three nights, in a wine-gla.s.sful of cold water which has been previously well boiled.

RINGWORM.--The head is to be washed twice a day with soft soap and warm soft water; when dried the places to be rubbed with a piece of linen rag dipped in ammonia from gas tar; the patient should take a little sulphur and mola.s.ses, or some other genuine aperient, every morning; brushes and combs should be washed every day, and the ammonia kept tightly corked.

PILES.--Hamamelis, both internally or as an injection in r.e.c.t.u.m. Bathe the parts with cold water or with astringent lotions, as alum water, especially in bleeding piles. Ointment of gallic acid and calomel is of repute. The best treatment of all is, suppositories of iodoform, ergotine, or tannic acid, which can be made at any drug store. {363}

CHICKEN POX.--No medicine is usually needed, except a tea made from pleurisy root, to make the child sweat. Milk diet is the best; avoidance of animal food; careful attention to the bowels; keep cool and avoid exposure to cold.

SCARLET FEVER.--Cold water compress on the throat. Fats and oils rubbed on hands and feet. The temperature of the room should be about 68 degrees Fahr., and all draughts avoided. Mustard baths for retrocession of the rash and to bring it out. Diet: ripe fruit, toast, gruel, beef tea and milk.

Stimulants are useful to counteract depression of the vital forces.

FALSE MEASLES OR ROSE RASH.--It requires no treatment except hygienic. Keep the bowels open. Nouris.h.i.+ng diet, and if there is itching, moisten the skin with five per cent. solution of aconite or solution of starch and water.

BILIOUS ATTACKS.--Drop doses of muriatic acid in a wine gla.s.s of water every four hours, or the following prescription. Bicarbonate of soda, one drachm; Aromatic spirits of ammonia, two drachms; Peppermint water, four ounces. Dose: Take a teaspoonful every four hours.

DIARRHOEA.--The following prescription is generally all that will be necessary: acetate of lead, eight grains; gum arabic, two drachms; acetate of morphia, one grain; and cinnamon water, eight ounces. Take a teaspoonful every three hours.

Be careful not to eat too much food. Some consider, the best treatment is to fast, and it is a good suggestion. Patients should keep quiet and have the room of a warm and even temperature.

VOMITING.--Ice dissolved in the mouth, often cures vomiting when all remedies fail. Much depends on the diet of persons liable to such attacks; this should be easily digestible food, taken often and in small quant.i.ties.

Vomiting can often be arrested by applying a mustard paste over the region of the stomach. It is not necessary to allow it to remain until the parts are blistered, but it may be removed when the part becomes thoroughly red, and reapplied if required after the redness has disappeared. One of the secrets to relieve vomiting is to give the stomach perfect rest, not allowing the patient even a gla.s.s of water, as long as the tendency remains to throw it up again.

NERVOUS HEADACHE.--Extract hyoscymus five grains, pulverized camphor five grains. Mix. Make four pills, one to be taken when the pain is most severe in nervous headache. Or three drops tincture nux vomica in a spoonful of water, two or three times a day. {364}

BLEEDING FROM THE NOSE,--from whatever cause--may generally be stopped by putting a plug of lint into the nostril; if this does not do, apply a cold lotion to the forehead; raise the head and place both arms over the head, so that it will rest on both hands; dip the lint plug, slightly moistened, in some powdered gum arabic, and plug the nostrils again; or dip the plug into equal parts of gum arabic and alum. An easier and simpler method is to place a piece of writing paper on the gums of the upper jaw, under the upper lip, and let it remain there for a few minutes.

BOILS.--These should be brought to a head by warm poultices of camomile flowers, or boiled white lily root, or onion root, by fermentation with hot water, or by stimulating plasters. When ripe they should be destroyed by a needle or lancet. But this should not be attempted until they are thoroughly proved.

BUNIONS may be checked in their early development by binding the joint with adhesive plaster, and keeping it on as long as any uneasiness is felt. The bandaging should be perfect, and it might be well to extend it round the foot. An inflamed bunion should be poulticed, and larger shoes be worn.

Iodine 12 grains, lard or spermaceti ointment half an ounce, makes a capital ointment for bunions. It should be rubbed on gently twice or three times a day.

FELONS.--One table-spoonful of red lead, and one table-spoonful of castile soap, and mix them with as much weak lye as will make it soft enough to spread like a salve, and apply it on the first appearance of the felon, and it will cure in ten or twelve days.

CURE FOR WARTS.--The easiest way to get rid of warts, is to pare off the thickened skin which covers the prominent wart; cut it off by successive layers and shave it until you come to the surface of the skin, and till you draw blood in two or three places. Then rub the part thoroughly over with lunar caustic, and one effective operation of this kind will generally destroy the wart; if not, you cut off the black spot which has been occasioned by the caustic, and apply it again; or you may apply acetic acid, and thus you will get rid of it. Care must be taken in applying these acids, not to rub them on the skin around the wart.

WENS.--Take the yoke of some eggs, beat up, and add as much fine salt as will dissolve, and apply a plaster to the wen every ten hours. It cures without pain or any other inconvenience.

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HOW TO CURE

Apoplexy, Bad Breath and Quinsy.

1. APOPLEXY.--Apoplexy occurs only in the corpulent or obese, and those of gross or high living.

_Treatment._--Raise the head to a nearly upright position; loosen all tight clothes, strings, etc., and apply cold water to the head and warm water and warm cloths to the feet. Have the apartment cool and well ventilated. Give nothing by the mouth until the breathing is relieved, and then only draughts of cold water.

2. BAD BREATH.--Bad or foul breath will be removed by taking a teaspoonful of the following mixture after each meal: One ounce chloride of soda, one ounce liquor of pota.s.sa, one and one-half ounces phosphate of soda, and three ounces of water.

3. QUINSY.--This is an inflammation of the tonsils, or common inflammatory sore throat; commences with a slight feverish attack, with considerable pain and swelling of the tonsils, causing some difficulty in swallowing; as the attack advances, these symptoms become more intense, there is headache, thirst, a painful sense of tension, and acute darting pains in the ears.

The attack is generally brought on by exposure to cold, and lasts from five to seven days, when it subsides naturally, or an abscess may form in tonsils and burst, or the tonsils may remain enlarged, the inflammation subsiding.

_Home Treatment._--The patient should remain in a warm room, the diet chiefly milk and good broths, some cooling laxative and diaph.o.r.etic medicine may be given; but the greatest relief will be found in the frequent inhalation of the steam of hot water through an inhaler, or in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way through the spout of a teapot.