Volume 1

The family physician: being a collection of useful family remedies / [Hugh Smith].

  • Smith, Hugh, 1736?-1789
Date:
[between 1770 and 1779]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The family physician: being a collection of useful family remedies / [Hugh Smith]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [9 ] Should this or any other of the eledaries grow dry, they may be foftened with a little fyrup, or a fpoonful of white wine. BALSAMIC ELECTARY Is good in all tickling coughs, forenefs at the bread:, inward bruifes, and fuch-like complaints. The quantity of a nutmeg may be taken, night and morning, and once or twice in the day befides, with a large draught of pectoral drink made hot after it. If coflive, take a little of the opening eledary, or a few fpoonfuls of the purging apozem, as you judge moft proper. BARK. The febrifuge quality of this bark, and its peculiar efficacy in curing agues* and intermittent fevers, is now univerfally known; yet a too hafty ufe of it oftentimes proves prejudicial, a remittent or continual fever being the confequence. You will feldom or never err, by giving a vomit firft, and, if the lick be of a full habit of body, you may alfo purge with fafety ; you will ad: mere prudently by waiting till they have had four or five ague fits before you throw in the bark, giving a fait of wormwood draught once in fix or eight hours, which will make the fits more regular, and prepare the blood for the bark. You fliould begin when the fever is gone intirely off, and give at leaft one ounce before you exped it to return f; half a dram, two fcruples, or a dram may be given for a dofe, as the ffomach will bear it; the lefs you adminifler at a time the more frequently it muft be repeated; for, unlefs you get the whole quantity down within the time, you do nothing. • » * Intermittent fevers of every kind, with regard to the intention cf cure, muft be treated in the fame manner as agues; the cold fit being rather accidental, than eilential to this difeafe. f In low fenny countries, where the atmofphere is moift and foggy, it is fome- times neceffary to give one ounce and a half of bark between the lits, but in gene¬ ral an ounce is fufficient.