Dose. All persons are not equally susceptible to the influence of medicines. As a rule, women require smaller doses than men, and children less than women. Infants are very susceptible to the effects of anodynes, even out of all relative proportion to other kinds of medicines. The circumstances and conditions of the system increase or diminish the effects of medicine, so that an aperient at one time may act as a cathartic at another, and a dose that will simply prove to be an anodyne when the patient is suffering great pain will act as a narcotic when he is not. This explains why the same dose often affects individuals differently. The following table is given to indicate the size of the dose, and is graduated to the age.
| YEARS | DOSE |
| 21 | full |
| 15 | 2-3 |
| 12 | 1-2 |
| 8 | 1-3 |
| 6 | 1-4 |
| 4 | 1-6 |
| 2 | 1-8 |
| 1 | 1-12 |
| ½ | 1-20 to 1-30 |
The doses mentioned in the following pages are those for adults, except when otherwise specified.
The Preparation of Medicines. The remedies which we shall mention for domestic use are mostly vegetable. Infusions and decoctions of these will often be advised on account of the fact that they are more available than the tinctures, fluid extracts, and concentrated principles, which we prefer, and almost invariably employ in our practice. Most of these medical extracts are prepared in our chemical laboratory under the supervision of a careful and skilled pharmaceutist. No one, we presume, would expect, with only a dish of hot water and a stew-kettle, to equal in pharmaceutical skill the learned chemist with all his ingeniously devised and costly apparatus for extracting the active, remedial principles from medicinal plants. Yet infusions and decoctions are not without their value; and from the inferior quality of many of the fluid extracts and other pharmaceutical preparations in the market, it may be questioned whether the former are not frequently as valuable as the latter. So unreliable are a majority of the fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles found in the drug-stores, that we long since found it necessary to have prepared in our laboratory, most of those which we employ. To the reliability of the preparations which we secure in this way we largely attribute our great success in the treatment of disease. Tinctures and fluid extracts are often prepared from old and worthless roots, barks, and herbs which have wholly lost their medicinal properties. Yet they are sold at just as high prices as those which are good. We manufacture our tinctures, fluid extracts, and concentrated, active principles from roots, barks, and herbs which are fresh, and selected with the greatest care. Many of the crude roots, barks, and herbs found in the market are inactive because they have been gathered at the wrong season. These, together with those that have been kept on hand so long as to have lost all medicinal value, are often sold in large quantities, and at reduced prices, to be manufactured into fluid extracts and tinctures. Of course, the preparations made from such materials are worthless. Whenever the dose of fluid extracts, tinctures, and concentrated, active principles, is mentioned in this chapter, the quantity advised is based upon our experience in the use of these preparations, as they are made in our laboratory, and the smallest quantity which will produce the desired effect is always given. When using most of the preparations found in the drug-stores, the doses have to be somewhat increased, and even then they will not always produce the desired effect, for reasons already given.
The List of Medicines which we shall introduce in this chapter will be quite limited, as we cannot hope, by making it extensive, that the non-professional reader would be able to prescribe with good judgment any other than the simpler remedies. Hence, we prefer, since we have not space in this volume to waste, to mention only a few of the most common remedies under each head or classification.
Tinctures. Very uniform and reliable tinctures may be made of most indigenous plants, by procuring the part to be employed, at the proper season, while it is green and fresh, bruising it well, and covering it with good strong whiskey, or with alcohol diluted with one part of water to three of alcohol, corking tightly, and letting it stand about fourteen days, when the tincture may be filtered or poured off from the drugs, and will be ready for use. Prepared in this imperfect manner, they rill be found to be much more reliable than any of the fluid extracts found in the drug-stores. An excess of the crude drug should be used in preparing the tincture to insure a perfect saturation of the alcohol with its active principles.
Homoeopathic Tinctures. The tinctures prepared by several of the German and French pharmaceutists, and called by them "Mother Tinctures," to distinguish them from the dilutions made therefrom, we have found to be very reliable, so much superior to any similar preparations made in this country that we purchase from them all we use of Pulsatilla, Staphisagria, Drosera and several others. They are prepared with great care from the green, crude material, and although high in price, when compared with other tinctures, yet the greater certainty of action which we secure in our prescriptions by their employment more than repays for the expense and trouble in procuring them, for of what account is expense to the true physician when life may depend upon the virtue of the agent he employs?
Infusions. These are generally made by adding one-half ounce of the crude medicine to a pint of water, which should be closely covered, kept warm, and used as directed. Flowers, leaves, barks, and roots become impaired by age, and it is necessary to increase or diminish the dose according to the strength of the article employed.
Decoctions. The difference between a decoction and an infusion is, that the plant or substance is boiled in the production of the former, in order to obtain its soluble, medicinal qualities. Cover the vessel containing the ingredients, thus confining the vapor, and shutting out the atmospheric air which sometimes impairs the active principles and their medicinal qualities. The ordinary mode of preparing a decoction is to use one ounce of the plant, root, bark, flower, or substance to a pint of water. The dose internally varies from a tablespoonful to one ounce.