Diseases > Domestic medicine

DOMESTIC MEDICINE.
that might prove destructive to the body, and all
that we can do, with safety, is to promote her inten¬
tions, and to assist her in expelling the enemy in
her own way. Evacuations by bleeding, stool, &c.
are likewise to be used with caution; they do not
remove the cause of the disease, and sometimes by
weakening the patient prolong the fit : but where
the constitution is able to bear it, it will be of use to
keep the body gently open by diet or very mild
laxative medicines.
Many things will indeed shorten a fit of the gout,
and seme will drive it off altogether: but nothing
has yet been found which will do this with safety to
the patient. In pain we eagerly grasp at anything
that promises immediate ease, and even hazard life
itself for a temporary relief. This is the true reason
why so many infallible remedies have been proposed
for the gout, and why such numbers have lost their
lives by the use of them. It would be as prudentto stop
the small-pox from rising, and to drive them into the
blood, as to attempt to repel the gouty matter after
it has been thrown upon the extremities. The latter
is as much an effort of Nature to free herself from
an offending cause as the former, and ought equally
to be promoted.
When the pain however is very great, and the
patient is restless, thirty or forty drops of laudanum,
more or less, according to the violence of the symp¬
toms, may be taken at bed-time. This will ease the
pain, procure rest, promote perspiration, and forward
the crisis of the disease.
After the fit is over, the patient ought to take a
gentle dose or two of the bitter tincture of rhubarb,
or some other warm stomachic purge. He should
also drink a weak infusion of stomachic bitters in
i small wine or ale, as Peruvian bark, with cinna-