Note.—The seeds of the castor oil plant should not be eaten, as they are poisonous.
Chinosol is a drug which has many of the advantages of carbolic acid without its poisonous or caustic properties. It is so generally useful that, at any rate for explorers, it will largely replace carbolic acid. It is antiseptic and disinfectant in its action, can be used as a mouth wash or gargle, for sore gums and ulcerated throats; it makes a good lotion for washing the hands, instruments, or wounds, and may be syringed into fresh wounds or into chronic ulcers.
It is put up in the compressed form, each tablet weighing eight and three-quarter grains, and the strength of the solutions here given are calculated strictly from this weight.
One tablet dissolved in a pint of water makes a solution of 1 in 1000 (equal to about 1 in 40, carbolic lotion), which is the most useful for general purposes, such as an antiseptic wash for the hands or for disinfecting surgical instruments.
A tablet in two pints of water makes a solution of 1 in 2000. This may be used for washing fresh wounds, burns, and suppurating surfaces, or as a gargle for sore throat.
As a healing dusting powder, one part of chinosol may be mixed with ten of boric acid, and used in the same manner as iodoform powder.
To disinfect typhoid or dysenteric stools, dissolve four tablets in one pint of water and add the mixture to the vessel containing the motions.
* Chloral.—Dose, five to twenty grains. Relieves restlessness and delirium, and produces sleep. Larger doses than twenty grains should not be given. In severe convulsions, due to certain poisons, e.g., strychnine, twenty grains or more of bromide of potassium may be added to the full dose of chloral, and given either by the mouth or bowel.
* Chloroform.—Dose, one to five drops. Two to four drops can be given with advantage with almost any drug, as a flavouring agent, and on account of its antispasmodic action.
From two to four drops put on a piece of loaf sugar and sucked will often stop sea-sickness or other vomiting.