As by promoting the excretions, mercury tends to debilitate, it must be used with caution in weak habits, and its debilitating effects should be counteracted by the use of such strengthening medicines as are adapted to the case in which we employ it. The debilitating effects of mercury, however, are not such as many suppose. In a habit of ordinary strength, a moderate course of mercury, properly conducted, produces little debility, and I have seen many under such a course recover both their strength and flesh. The mercury gives vigour, by removing the cause which impairs it. With caution there is no danger in making a trial of mercury in the most debilitated habit. In such the quantity first employed should be too small to produce any effect whatever. Let it be gradually increased; if, as often happens, the strength improves, let it be continued; if the strength be much impaired by it, it should be laid aside.
Nothing tends more to debilitate under the use of mercury, than the unfortunate idea, that the patient should be denied the advantage of free air and exercise. Under certain circumstances, confinement to the house is proper. When it is necessary to induce salivation, the patient should remain at home. The inconvenience, indeed, of going out is sufficient to prevent it. Under even the gentlest course of mercury, he should remain at home in damp cold weather, and after sun-set. With these exceptions, he should be as much in the open air as his strength will permit. It is not exposure to a cool, or even a cold air, that checks perspiration. In a dry cold air, with a due degree of exercise, the insensible perspiration is perhaps freer than under any other circumstances. All that is necessary with respect to temperature is, that it shall not be so low that the quantity of exercise, which the patient can take without inconvenience, shall not be sufficient to keep up a proper degree of heat.
All sudden changes of temperature, particularly that from warm to cold, (which, notwithstanding the refinements of some modern philosophers, may easily, I believe, be proved to be the most pernicious) are to be guarded against. The same may be said of partial exposure to cold. In short, it is not exposure to cold, but exposure to the causes of what we call taking cold, that is injurious to those under the use of mercury.
Strong exercises, I mean such as induce any degree of sensible perspiration, and all kinds of fatigue, are hurtful.
All indigestible and irritating articles of food should be avoided by those under the influence of mercury, both because it is proper, under the use of all medicines which promote the excretions, to avoid whatever debilitates, and because every thing that irritates the bowels tends to solicit a more copious secretion from them, and thus to divert the mercury from the channel, to which it is our aim to direct it. On this account much wine, strong and high seasoned food, and whatever tends to produce flatulence and acidity, are injurious.
The diet, however, should not be low, as was once recommended under the use of mercury, which, combined with the confinement, tended to produce the greater part of the debility attributed to the effects of the medicine. It should be nourishing, mild, and in some degree mucilaginous. Wine should be drank in preference to every other kind of fermented liquor. The stronger wines should be diluted. The quantity should be moderate, but proportioned to the patient’s habits.
FINIS.
JAMES ROBBINS, Printer, Winchester.