Warts, if not large, are easily removed, by brushing them with the muriated tincture of iron, or the application of a lotion of lunar caustic (Form [17]).
Where they are numerous and large, and resist the remedies just recommended, the nitric acid is an excellent escharotic; it gives little or no pain, and is rarely productive of inflammation. The glans, if not naturally denuded (in which instance, by the way, warts seldom accrue), should be kept so for a time; and the nitric acid, after a few moments, washed off with cold water. Notwithstanding, excision is sometimes necessary to their complete removal.
When the organs of generation are infested by pediculi, or crab-lice, the most efficacious and agreeable remedy is the sulphur-bath; one bath generally effecting an extinction of every one of them, even though they be all over the body.
Some recommend shaving the hair off the pubis, the locality in which the vermin are most usually engendered, and applying blue ointment or the black wash. Such a practice is seldom ineffectual, but the irritation attendant upon the reproduction of hair is absolutely intolerable. The hair need not be removed, as the above remedies will be all-sufficient without it. Rubbing the parts well with strong mercurial (or blue) ointment, or the black wash (Form [18]), or even powdering them with calomel, will at once destroy the insects, and thereby remove the itching.
Swelled testicle, or hernia humoralis, more especially that proceeding from gonorrhœal irritation, is ushered in and discovered in the following manner: The patient, on some sudden movement of the body, experiences a pain, darting from one of the testes (both being rarely affected at the same time) to the loins—the left testicle is the one generally attacked. On examination, he finds that the testicle is rather swollen and full, and very painful on being handled; the swelling quickly increases and becomes hard, which hardness extends to the spermatic chord, presenting the feel of a rope, passing from the scrotum to the groin.
It is remarkable that when swelled testicle occurs, the discharge from the urethra, which, from previously being very profuse, and the scalding on making water, which was very severe, both suddenly diminish, or cease entirely, until the inflammation of the testis declines; hence, it has been supposed by some, that the disease is translated from the urethra to the testicle.
It is more probably however, derived from the sympathy between the two; the irritation of the one affecting the other, and the preponderance of inflammation in the testicle acting on the principle of counter-irritation to the urethra, and, for a time, thereby lessening the disease in it: for it is observed that, as soon as one improves, the disease returns in the other. The treatment of hernia humoralis must be strictly antiphlogistic. In no form of gonorrhœal disease is bleeding more absolutely necessary.
The timely and prompt loss of twelve or sixteen ounces of blood from the arm will often cut short the complaint, and render other remedies almost unnecessary; while the temporising delay, under the vain hope of the inflammation subsiding, will allow the disease to make rapid progress, and impose a necessity of several weeks’ rest and absence from business, before a cure can be effected.
Immediately, then, on the occurrence of swelled testicle, I would recommend the patient to be bled—to take some aperient medicine, and, if the inflammation continues, to apply from twelve to eighteen leeches, and afterward suffer the wounds to bleed for twenty minutes in a warm bath; to retire to bed or to the sofa, and to maintain a horizontal posture. If he be strong, young, and robust, an emetic (Form [19]) may be given previous to the aperient, which has been known to remove the swelling almost instantaneously.
Iodine (Form [20]) also possesses a similar specific property in reducing swelled testicle, and may be taken during the inflammatory stage after bleeding and aperients, as may likewise the chlorate or hydriodate of potass (Form [21]).