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The Family Physician: Dissolve
Dissolve two ounces of hepatic aloes, with a small spoonfull of sweet oil, add as much water, in a porringer, over a small fire. - When it is of a proper consistence, make it into pills, with or without liquorice powder. Emctic tartar vomit.
Dissolve four grains of emetic tartar in half a pint of hot water, stir it about well: when cold it is fit for use. Take two table-spoon-fuls every quarter of an hour till it operates; after which no more of the vomit must be taken. Drink a small cup of gruel, or weak camomile tea after every puke, to work it off. A pint, or a pint and a half of gruel, or tea, is generally sufficient. - To settle the stomach, drink a little weak brandy and water, and lie down half an hour.
One table-spoonful of the emetic tartar water, every quarter of an hour, till it pukes, is sufficient for weakly people. While others again require four times as much. A child of a month old may take a small tea-spoonful every quarter of an hour; one of three months old will require two tea-spoonfuls, and so in proportion to their age and strength. Children require nothing to work off a vomit; and a pint or a pint and a half of gruel, or camomile tea, is sufficient for adults. It is an absurd and pernicious practice, to drink pint after pint of hot liquids, to work off a vomit, and frequently leaves a very great relaxation upon the stomach, which does not recover its tone for some months afterwards.
The design of giving the vomit in the manner above described, is in order that it may work in the most gentle manner possible. If it operates two, or three, or four times, it is sufficient. Violent vomits are often attended with dangerous consequences; whereas gentle ones may be repeated two or three times a week, if necessary.
If a vomit works too violently, drink moderately of weak brandy and water, and apply a raw onion, cut in two, to the pit of the stomach. The best time for taking a vomit is in a morning fasting. But in cases where no time is to be lost, it may be taken at eleven o'clock, or in the evening. Persons who are costive should not venture upon a vomit till the costiveness is removed; which must be done in an hour or two's time, by a clyster, or a small dose of jalap powder, or any other opening medicine. In consumptive cases, and in the dysentery, ipecacuanha is the properest vomit. The emetic tartar is best calculated for removing acidity, bile, and putrid matter from the stomach. In the beginning of some nervous and putrid fevers, where the pulse is weak, and the stomach loaded with sour, foetid, yellow, or green matter, there is perhaps no medicine equal to it. The heaviness, listlessness, pain in the loins, and head-ache, are generally removed before next morning.
Emetic tartar, when it is prescribed with judgment, and taken properly, is one of the best medicines known at this day. I have given it to many thousand patients, with the utmost safety, and with the greatest advantage. I prefer it in every case to James' Fever-powder, though a medicine composed of the same materials. The operations of emetic tartar may be directed to the stomach, the bowels, or the skin, as the case requires.
An excellent eye-water.
Take flowers of zinc, and white copperas, of each a quarter of an ounce, water half a pint; mix them together. It is good in inflammations of the eye-lids, and any external or internal excoriation. If it is too sharp, add a little more water to it.
An excellent remedy for the stone or gravel in the reins or bladder, and the stoppage of urine.
Take one ounce of the spirits of sweet nitre, two drachms of liquid laudanum, and half an ounce of the oil of juniper. Take a teaspoonful in a cup of linseed tea, sweetened with honey. I have been the happy means of restoring to health of body a great number of my fellow mortals, by this most salutary and admirable medicine, for a many years past, to my own heartfelt satisfaction, and their great comfort and relief: but it is our blessed divine Physician alone that doth give virtue to all and every one of our said medicines, before they can even imbibe the least power of healing the body of man; even him who healed the sick and the diseased by a word, a touch, &c. even without the application of any medicine whatsoever; and hath likewise taught, and almost fully enabled his disciples, in all the various ages of the world, to do the same. These are called miracles, but there are some amongst us, who, through ignorance, deny the power of miracles since our Saviour and the apostles' time: but these are they who deny the holy scriptures, and also the power of those gifts of God, mentioned in the 1st Cor. xii. but we find that God is just the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.