Desperate cases of ulcerated sore throat are sometimes relieved by the constant use of this and the chlorate of potassa gargle.
For a Cough.
Eat slowly, three or four times a day, six lumps of sugar, saturated with the very best whiskey you can get.
Having tested this “old woman’s prescription” for myself, and found in it the messenger of healing to a cough of several months’ standing which had set physicians and cod-liver oil at defiance, I write it down here without scruples or doubt.
For Cholera Symptoms,
Summer complaint, or any of the numerous forms of diseased bowels—pin a bandage of red flannel as tightly about the abdomen as is consistent with comfort, having first heated it well at the fire or register. The application is inexpressibly soothing to the racked and inflamed intestines, and will, sometimes, combined with perfect quiet on the part of the patient, and judicious diet, cure even dysentery without medicine. Persons who have chronic maladies of this class should wear the red flannel bandage constantly.
For years, this has been my invariable treatment of the disorders which are, particularly in the summer, the torment of children and terror of mothers, and the results have been most gratifying. I keep in what may be called my “accident drawer,” red flannel, divided into bandages of various lengths, and to these is recourse had in slight, and even violent cases, instead of to drugs. If the patient is suffering intense pain, steep a flannel pad large enough to cover the affected part, in hot spirits (you may add a little laudanum in severe cases) and bind upon the abdomen with the flannel bandage, renewing whenever the sufferer feels that it is growing cold.
Above all things else, keep the patient quiet in bed, if possible, but in a recumbent position—and the feet warm with flannel or bottles of hot water. These are always preferable to bricks, or hot boards for warming the extremities, being clean, safe and good preservers of heat.
The diet should be light and nourishing, avoiding liquids and acids as much as possible. Let the patient quench his thirst by holding small bits of ice in his mouth, or, if he must drink, let him have mucilaginous beverages, such as gum-arabic water. The burning thirst consequent upon these diseases may be measurably allayed by eating, very slowly, dry gum arabic, which has, likewise, curative qualities.