Dr. Mead says, that the virtue of his medicine consists in promoting urine. But how a poison should be expelled by urine, with only three or four doses of any medicine, however powerful, it is not easy to conceive. More time is certainly necessary, even though the medicine were more powerful than that which the Doctor prescribes.
The East India specific is still more exceptionable on this account.
As these and most other medicines, taken singly, have frequently been found to fail, we shall recommend the following course:
If a person be bit in a fleshy part, where there is no hazard of hurting any large blood-vessel, the parts adjacent to the wound may be cut away. But if this be not done soon after the bite has been received, it will be better to omit it.
The wound may be dressed with salt and water, or a pickle made of vinegar and salt, and afterwards dressed twice a-day with yellow basilicon mixed with red precipitate of mercury.
The patient should begin to use either Dr. Mead’s medicine, or some of the others mentioned above. If he takes Mead’s medicine, he may use it as the Doctor directs for four days successively. Let him then omit it for two or three days, and again repeat the same number of doses as before.
During this course, he must rub into the parts about the wound, daily, one drachm of the mercurial ointment. This may be done for ten or twelve days at least.
When this course is over, he may take a purge or two, and wait a few days till the effect of the mercury be gone off. He must then begin to use the cold bath, into which he may go every morning for five or six weeks. If he should feel cold and chilly for a long time after coming out of the cold bath, it will be better to use a tepid one, or to have the water a little warmed.
In the mean time, we would advise him not to leave off all internal medicines, but to take either one of the boluses of snake-root, asafœtida, and camphire; or one of the powders of nitre, camphire, and snake-root, twice a-day. These may be used during the whole time he is bathing.
During the use of the mercurial ointment, the patient must keep within doors, and take nothing cold.