§ 552. When any Person has taken too acrid, too sharp, a Vomit, or a Purge, which operates with excessive Violence; whether this consists in the most vehement Efforts and Agitations, the Pains, Convulsions, or Swoonings, which are their frequent Consequences; or whether that prodigious Evacuation and Emptiness their Operation causes, (which is commonly termed a Super-purgation) and which may hurry the Patient off; Instances of which are but too common among the lower Class of the People, who much too frequently confide themselves to the Conduct of ignorant Men-slayers: In all such unhappy Accidents, I say, we should treat these unfortunate Persons, as if they had been actually poisoned, by violent corroding Poisons, (See [§ 533]) that is, we should fill them, as it were, with Draughts of warm Water, Milk, Oil, Barley-water, Almond Milk, emollient Glysters with Milk, and the Yolks of Eggs; and also bleed them plentifully, if their Pains are excessive, and their Pulses strong and feverish.
The Super-purgation, the excessive Discharge, is to be stopt, after having plied the Patient plentifully with diluting Drinks, by giving the calming Anodyne Medicines directed in the Removal of acute Pains, [§ 536, Nº. 6].
Flanels dipt in hot Water, in which some Venice Treacle is dissolved, are very serviceable: and should the Evacuations by Stool be excessive, and the Patient has not a high Fever, and a parching Kind of Heat, a Morsel of the same Treacle, as large as a Nutmeg, may be dissolved in his Glyster.
But should the Vomiting solely be excessive, without any Purging, the Number of the emollient Glysters with Oil and the Yolk of an Egg must be increased; and the Patient should be placed in a warm Bath.
§ 553. Purges frequently repeated, without just and necessary Indications, are attended with much the same ill Effects as frequent Bleedings. They destroy the Digestions; the Stomach no longer, or very languidly, exerts its Functions; the Intestines prove inactive; the Patient becomes liable to very severe Cholics; the Plight of the Body, deprived of its salutary Nutrition, falls off; Perspiration is disordered; Defluxions ensue; nervous Maladies come on, with a general Languor; and the Patient proves old, long before the Number of his Years have made him so.
Much irreparable Mischief has been done to the Health of Children, by Purges injudiciously given and repeated. They prevent them from attaining their utmost natural Strength, and frequently contract their due Growth. They ruin their Teeth; dispose young Girls to future Obstructions; and when they have been already affected by them, they render them still more obstinate.
It is a Prejudice too generally received, that Persons who have little or no Appetite need purging; since this is often very false, and most of those Causes, which lessen or destroy the Appetite, cannot be removed by purging; though many of them may be increased by it.
Persons whose Stomachs contain much glairy viscid Matter suppose, they may be cured by Purges, which seem indeed at first to relieve them: but this proves a very slight and deceitful Relief. These Humours are owing to that Weakness and Laxity of the Stomach, which Purges augment; since notwithstanding they carry off Part of these viscid Humours generated in it, at the Expiration of a few Days there is a greater Accumulation of them than before; and thus, by a Re-iteration of purging Medicines, the Malady soon becomes incurable, and Health irrecoverably lost. The real Cure of such Cases is effected by directly opposite Medicines. Those referred to, or mentioned, [§ 272], are highly conducive to it.
§ 554. The Custom of taking stomachic Medicines infused in Brandy, Spirit of Wine, Cherry Water, &c. is always dangerous; for notwithstanding the present immediate Relief such Infusions afford in some Disorders of the Stomach, they really by slow Degrees impair and ruin that Organ; and it may be observed, that as many as accustom themselves to Drams, go off, just like excessive Drinkers, in Consequence of their having no Digestion; whence they sink into a State of Depression and Languor, and die dropsical.
§ 555. Either Vomits or Purges may be often beneficially omitted, even when they have some Appearance of seeming necessary, by abating one Meal a Day for some time; by abstaining from the most nourishing Sorts of Food; and especially from those which are fat; by drinking freely of cool Water, and taking extraordinary Exercise. The same Regimen also serves to subdue, without the Use of Purges, the various Complaints which often invade those, who omit taking purging Medicines, at those Seasons and Intervals, in which they have made it a Custom to take them.