For Infants, too young to swallow a Pill, pound it, and mix it with Currant Jelly, Honey, or Treacle.
On the first attack of Disease—it may generally be disarmed by discharging the contents of the Bowels:—in every Disorder[107] the main point is carefully to watch, and constantly to keep up the activity of the Alimentary Canal—for want of due attention to this, Millions (especially of Children) HAVE DIED OF MEDICABLE DISORDERS!!
For Bilious or Liver[108] Complaints, (which are now the fashionable names for all those deranged sensations of the Abdominal Viscera—which as often arise from the want, as from the excess of Bile—and perhaps most frequently from Indigestion)—and for expelling Worms[109], for which it is the fashion to administer Mercury[110] (which, because it is the only remedy for one Disease, people suppose must be a panacea for every disorder) and other drastic mineral medicines, which are awfully uncertain both in their strength and in their operation.
If, instead of two or three times a week tormenting your Bowels with Corrosive Cathartics,—Hydragogues,—Phlegmagogues, &c., you take one or two gentle Persuaders, twice or thrice a day;—they will excite a gradual and regularly increased action of the Viscera—restore the tone of the Alimentary tube—and speedily and effectually cure the disorder, without injuring the Constitution.
There is not a more universal or more mischievous Vulgar Error, than the notion, that Physic is efficacious, in proportion as it is extremely disagreeable to take, and frightfully violent in its operation,—unless a medicine actually produces more Distress in the System, than the Disorder it is administered to remove—in fact, if the Remedy be not worse than the Disease, the million have no faith in it—and are not satisfied that they can be perfectly cured if they escape Phlebotomy,—unless put to extreme pain, and plentifully supplied with Black Doses, and drastic Drugs;—they have the best opinion of that Doctor who most furiously
“Vomits—Purges—Blisters—Bleeds, and Sweats ’em.”
To perfectly content them that you have most profoundly considered their case, you must to such Prescription—add a Proscription of every thing they appear particularly partial to!!!
People who in all other respects appear to be very rational—and are apt to try other questions by the rules of Common Sense, in matters relating to their Health, surrender their understanding to the fashion of the Day,—and in the present Century, on all occasions take Calomel as coolly as in the last, their Grandfathers inundated their poor Stomachs with Tar-Water.
Tonic Tincture, (No. 569) is