Soft poultices, when they can conveniently be applied to the parts, are of great service. They may be made of the flour of linseed, or of wheat-bread and milk softened with fresh butter or sweet oil. When poultices cannot be conveniently used, cloths wrung out of warm water, or bladders filled with warm milk and water, may be applied. I have often known the most excruciating pains, during the inflammatory state of the gonorrhœa, relieved by one of these applications.
Few things tend more to keep off inflammation in the spermatic vessels, than a proper suspensory for the scrotum. It ought to be so contrived as to support the testicles, and should be worn from the first appearance of the disease, till it has ceased some weeks.
The above treatment will sometimes remove the gonorrhœa so quickly, that the person will be in doubt whether he really laboured under that disease. This, however, is too favourable a turn to be often expected. It more frequently happens, that we are able to procure an abatement or remission of the inflammatory symptoms, so far as to make it safe to have recourse to the great antidote mercury.
Many people, on the first appearance of a gonorrhœa, fly to the use of mercury. This is a bad plan. Mercury is often not at all necessary in a gonorrhœa; and when taken too early, it does mischief. It may be necessary to complete the cure, but can never be proper at the commencement of it.
When bleeding, purging, fomentations, and the other things recommended above, have eased the pain, softened the pulse, relieved the heat of urine, and rendered the involuntary ejections less frequent, the patient may begin to use mercury in any form that is least disagreeable to him.
If he takes the common mercurial pill, two at night and one in the morning will be a sufficient dose at first. Should they affect the mouth too much, the dose must be lessened; if not at all, it may be increased to five or six pills in the day. If calomel be thought preferable, two or three grains of it, formed into a bolus, with a little of the conserve of hips, may be taken at bed-time, and the dose gradually increased to eight or ten grains. One of the most common preparations of mercury now in use is the corrosive sublimate. This may be taken in the manner afterwards recommended under the confirmed lues or pox. I have always found it one of the most safe and efficacious medicines when properly used.
The foregoing medicines may either be taken every day, or every other day, as the patient is able to bear them. They ought never to be taken in such quantity as to raise a salivation, unless in a very slight degree. This disease may be more safely, and as certainly, cured without a salivation as with it. When the mercury runs off by the mouth, it is not so successful in carrying off the disease, as when it continues longer in the body, and is discharged gradually.
Should the patient be purged or griped in the night by the mercury, he may take half a dram of the opiate confection dissolved in an ounce of cinnamon-water, to prevent bloody stools, which are apt to happen should the patient catch cold, or if the mercury has not been duly prepared. When the bowels are weak, and the mercury is apt to gripe or purge, these disagreeable consequences may be prevented by taking, with the foregoing pills or bolus, half a dram or two scruples of diascordium, or of the Japonic confection.
To prevent the disagreeable circumstance of the mercury’s affecting the mouth too much, or bringing on a salivation, it may be combined with purgatives. With this view the laxative mercurial pill has been contrived, the usual dose of which is half a dram, or three pills night and morning, to be repeated every other day; but the safer way is for the patient to begin with two, or even with one pill, gradually increasing the dose.
To such persons as can neither swallow a bolus nor a pill, mercury may be given in a liquid form, as it can be suspended even in a watery vehicle, by means of gum-arabic, which not only serves this purpose, but likewise prevents the mercury from affecting the mouth, and renders it in many respects a better medicine.[[2]]