Diseases > Domestic medicine

DOMESTIC MEDICINE. 48!
on foot, horseback, or in a carriage, as they can
bear.
Medicine.—Almost all that can be done by medi¬
cine in this disease, is to relieve the patient when
seized with a violent tit. This indeed requires the
greatest expedition, as the disease often proves sud¬
denly fatal. In the paroxysm or fit, the body is
generally bound; a purging clyster, with a solution
of assafoetida, ought therefore to be administered,
and, if there be occasion, it may be repeated two or
three times. The patient’s feet and legs ought to be
immersed in warm water, and afterwards rubbed
with a warm hand, or dry cloth. Bleeding, unless
extreme weakness or old age should forbid it, is
highly proper. If there be a violent spasm about the
breast or stomach, warm fomentations, or bladders
filled with warm milk and water, may be applied to
the part affected, and warm cataplasms to the soles
of the feet. The patient must drink freely of dilut¬
ing liquors, and may take a teaspoonful of the tinc¬
ture of castor and of saffron mixed together, in a
cup of valerian-tea, twice or thrice a day. Sometimes
a vomit has a very good effect, and snatches the
patient, as it were, from the jaws of death. This,
however, will be more safe after other evacuations
have been premised. A very strong infusion of
roasted coffee is said to give ease in an asthmatic
paroxysm.
In the moist asthma, such things as promote ex¬
pectoration, or spitting,ought to be used ; as the syrup
of squills, gum ammoniac, and such like. A common
spoonful of the syrup, or oxymel of squills, mixed
with an equal quantity of cinnamon-water, may be
taken three or four times through the day, and four
or five pills made of equal parts of assafeetida and
gum-ammoniac, at bed-time. After copious evacua-