Thomsonian medical instructor : containing practical information relating to the Thomsonian medicines, plants, barks, and roots, in general use, directions for administering a Thomsonian emetic and vapour bath, observations on preparing food for the sick, dietetic habits.

Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thomsonian medical instructor : containing practical information relating to the Thomsonian medicines, plants, barks, and roots, in general use, directions for administering a Thomsonian emetic and vapour bath, observations on preparing food for the sick, dietetic habits. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    When the stomach is cold, and contains acid, a dose of pepper, or composition tea, is apt to cause pain in the stomach,#more especially during the first steaming in a course of medicine. In such cases, the pain is relieved when the patient belches wind or gas from the stomach. Some No. 6, in hot water, taken as hot as the patient can bear it, will cause the gas to be sent up, and the patient is thus relieved. Essence of peppermint, lavender, or any thing that is good to expel wind from the stomach, may be employed. The operation of an emetic, which, in certain con- ditions of the system is attended with scarcely any unpleasant feelings ; under other circumstances, for instance, where there is great derangement of the stomach and bowels, will be accompanied by dis- tressing sickness and pain. The relaxation and sickness sometimes produced under the influence of lobelia, is said to be very much like extreme sea- sickness. Probably no case of death has ever been occasioned by sea-sickness alone, although it some- times lasts several days, or even weeks, the patient continuing to retch and vomit almost incessantly. The. alarming symptoms, as they are termed, seldom or never occur to any considerable degree under the operation of a course of medicine, except where the disease is deeply seated, or the person of a peculiar nervous temperament. Much, however, depends upon the form of the emetic. Thus, the lobelia seed, given without much stimulus, will occa- sion more or less relaxation of the system in almost every instance; still the same form and quantity of medicines will produce great diversity of symptoms in different conditions of the stomach; and in per-