Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1 / The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author

by Benjamin Rush

The use of common salt as an anthelmintic medicine, is both ancient and universal. Celsus recommends it. In Ireland it is a common practice to feed children, who are afflicted by worms, for a week or two upon a salt-sea weed, and when the bowels are well charged with it, to give a purge of wort in order to carry off the worms, after they are debilitated by the salt diet.

I have administered many pounds of common salt coloured with cochineal, in doses of half a drachm, upon an empty stomach in the morning, with great success in destroying worms.

Ever since I observed the effects of sugar and other sweet substances upon worms, I have recommended the liberal use of all of them in the diet of children, with the happiest effects. The sweet substances probably act in preventing the diseases from worms in the stomach only, into which they often insinuate themselves, especially in the morning. When we wish to dislodge worms from the bowels by sugar or molasses, we must give these substances in large quantities, so that they may escape in part the action of the stomach upon them.

I can say nothing from my own experience of the efficacy of the mineral salts, composed of copper, iron, and zinc, combined with vitriolic acid, in destroying worms in the bowels. Nor have I ever used the corrosive sublimate in small doses as an anthelmintic.

I have heard of well-attested cases of the efficacy of the oil of turpentine in destroying worms.

The expressed juices of onions and of garlic are very common remedies for worms. From one of the experiments, it appears that the onion juice possesses strong anthelmintic virtues.

I have often prescribed a tea-spoonful of gunpowder in the morning upon an empty stomach, with obvious advantage. The active medicine here is probably the nitre.

I have found a syrup made of the bark of the Jamaica cabbage-tree[46], to be a powerful as well as a most agreeable anthelmintic medicine. It sometimes purges and vomits, but its good effects may be obtained without giving it in such doses as to produce these evacuations.