MEDICAL.
Eglantine.—If the teeth become loosened, and the gums show a tendency to bleed on slight provocation, use a mouth-wash of tincture of myrrh; add about a teaspoonful of tincture of myrrh to half a tumblerful of water, and rinse out your mouth and wash your teeth with it. The “tincture of myrrh and borax” of the shops is made by mixing tincture of myrrh with glycerine of borax. Both these are pharmacopœial preparations.
A Japanese Girl.—In common parlance we use the term “fainting” to express any condition in which a person acutely loses consciousness and falls to the ground. The term therefore includes epilepsy, apoplexy, sunstroke, acute syncope, and the condition which you wish to know about, ordinary fainting fits, or semi-syncope. The fits, as everybody knows, occur chiefly in young women and girls who are anæmic or hysterical. They consist of a momentary weakness of the heart-beat, as the result of which the brain is insufficiently supplied with blood, and the person drops down “in a heap.” This sudden falling lowers the position of the head, and so prevents the brain from becoming anæmic. When a person faints, or feels faint, her head should be lowered; if she is sitting in a chair, her head should be forced down to her knees; if she is standing up, she should be placed upon her back. How often we see kind-hearted persons carrying a fainting girl out of church, taking care to keep her head well raised! Sal volatile, cold water and brandy are sometimes given to fainting girls, but none of these is necessary, and the brandy usually does harm. Though fainting looks very dangerous, it is really very trivial. We have never seen a death during one of these young women’s fainting fits.
Lady Babbie.—It is related of a great physician that a girl once came to him complaining, as you do, that she made horrible grimaces, moving her scalp and eyebrows about in a most absurd manner, and making herself look ridiculous. Of course he knew at once what was the matter, and said to her, “Let me see you make these grimaces.” When she had finished, he said to her, “What you have got the matter with you is of no moment, but I warn you not to let anyone see you making those grimaces, because when you do so you present a striking resemblance to Mrs. ——” (a famous criminal of the time, then “wanted” by the police), “and you may get run in if you don’t take care!” This so frightened the girl that she never made grimaces again! This curious habit can be cured, as you see. It is semi-involuntary—that is, it was originally voluntary, but from constant repetition it has become a habit. It is a habit from which you must break yourself. It is no good saying you cannot—we say you can; but you must try, and at present avoid anything which is liable to produce it. We have not asked you to do anything impossible—“to do lessons or anything of that sort”—but why do you have such an objection “to do lessons or anything of that sort?” You will find that there are more unpleasant things in life than lessons!