HOME TREATMENT OF THE SECRET HABIT.
1. The first condition of recovery is a prompt and permanent abandonment of the ruinous habit. Without a faithful adherence to this prohibitory law on the part of the patient all medication on the part of the physician will assuredly fail. The patient must plainly understand that future prospects, character, health, and life itself, depend on an unfaltering resistance to the morbid solicitation; with the assurance, however, that a due perseverance will eventually render, what now seems like a resistless and overwhelming propensity, not only controllable but perfectly loathsome and undesirable.
2. Keep the mind employed by interesting the patient in the various topics of the day, and social features of the community.
3. Plenty of bodily out of door exercise, hoeing in the garden, walking, or working on the farm; of course not too heavy work must be indulged in.
4. If the patient is weak and very much emaciated, cod liver oil is an excellent remedy.
5. Diet. The patient should live principally on brown bread, oat meal, graham crackers, wheat meal, cracked or boiled wheat, or hominy, and food of that character. No meats should be indulged in whatever; milk diet if used by the patient is an excellent remedy. Plenty of fruit should be indulged in; dried toast and baked apples make an excellent supper. The patient should eat early in the evening, never late at night.
6. Avoid all tea, coffee, or alcoholic stimulants of any kind.
7. "Early to bed and early to rise," should be the motto of every victim of this vice. A patient should take a cold bath every morning after rising. A cold water injection in moderate quantities before retiring has cured many patients.
8. If the above remedies are not sufficient, a family physician should be consulted.