SUFFOCATION FROM NOXIOUS GASES, ETC.—Remove to the fresh air; dash cold vinegar and water in the face, neck, and breast; keep up the warmth of the body; if necessary, apply mustard poultices to the soles of the feet and to the spine, and try artificial respirations as in drowning, with electricity.
LIGHTNING AND SUNSTROKE.—Treat the same as apoplexy.
MIND CURE.
THE MIND CURE, otherwise known in its various subdivisions as metaphysics, Christian science, mental science, etc., is a species of delusion quite popular at the present time. Every era of the world has cherished similar delusions, for the mass of the human race, even in what are considered the educated classes, are so unfamiliar with the processes of exact reasoning that they fall a ready prey to quacks of all kinds. The fundamental idea of the mind cure system is that there is no such thing as sickness. Disease, says one of their apostles, is an error of the mind, the result of fear. Fear is only faith inverted and perverted. God, who is all good Himself, and who made everything good, cannot have been the author of any disease. As disease, therefore, is not a creation, it has no existence, and when the healer has succeeded in impressing this fact upon the mind of the patient, the cure is effected. It is curious to note into what utter absurdities the need for consistency carries these apostles. Poisons, they say, would be quite harmless if the fear of them was removed, but we have yet to find the "mental science" teacher who will undertake to prove this by herself taking liberal doses of aconite and strychnine. The illnesses of children are explained by the hypothesis of hereditary fear. The majority of the teachers of this new faith are women, many of whom, no doubt, are sincere in their belief; but it may be safely stated that the men engaged as the so-called physicians of the new practice are, with few exceptions, unprincipled quacks, who have gone into the business for the money they can make by duping the ignorant. As far as there is any truth underlying the vagaries of mind cures, and their boasts of remarkable cases of healing, it may be admitted that the mind has much influence over the body. This fact has been recognized by intelligent physicians for centuries. And that the peculiar modern type of nervous diseases, which are so largely caused by excessive stimulus of the nerves and the imagination, should be amendable to cure through the imagination, is not strange. It will be noted that this mental cure has effected its miracles mainly among women, where it has the emotional temperament to work on, and almost wholly in the ranks of the wealthy and well-to-do, where there is little or no impoverishment of the system by insufficient food and excessive toil to hinder its effects. We have not heard, nor are we likely to hear, of an epidemic disease checked by the mind cure, or of the healing of acute affections or organic troubles through its agency. Nor do we hear of its seeking to carry its message of healing into the houses of the suffering poor in large cities, where hunger, exposure and foul airs open wide the door to fevers and all deadly diseases, nor yet into the hospitals for contagious or incurable affections. In the presence of such realities it would prove, as its votaries probably understand, a too-painful mockery. Intelligently analyzed, therefore, this new revelation amounts to nothing more than a quite striking proof of the remarkable influence of the mind over the nervous system. Beyond this, the craze, in attempting to disprove the existence of disease, and to show that poisons do not kill, is simply running against the plain and inevitable facts of life, and can safely be left to perish through its own rashness.
While it must be admitted that many upright and worthy people are followers of this faith, it can be asserted that to say "disease is only a mental derangement" is carrying the idea of the power of mind over matter entirely too far.
POISONS AND THEIR ANTIDOTES.
Always send immediately for a medical man. Save all fluids vomited, and articles of food, cups, glasses, etc., used by the patient before taken ill, and lock them up.
As a rule give emetics after poisons that cause sleepiness and raving; chalk, milk, eggs, butter and warm water, or oil, after poisons that cause vomiting and pain in the stomach and bowels, with purging; and when there is no inflammation about the throat, tickle it with a feather to excite vomiting.