Diseases > Domestic medicine

428 Buchan’s
far as the patient can bear it. I have known this
medicine, when duly persisted in, prove beneficial.
Musk has sometimes been found to succeed in the
epilepsy. Ten or twelve grains of it, with the same
quantity of factitious cinnabar, may be made into a
bolus, and taken every night and morning.
Sometimes the epilepsy has been cured by electricity.
Convulsion-fits proceed from the same causes, and
must be treated in the same manner as the epilepsy.
There is one particular species of convulsion fits
which commonly goes by the name of St. Vitus’s
dance, wherein the patient is agitated with strange
motions and gesticulations, which by the common
people are generally believed to be the effects of
witchcraft. This disease may be cured by repeated
bleedings and purges; and afterwards using the
medicines prescribed above for the epilepsy, viz.
the Peruvian bark and snake-root, &c. Chaly¬
beate waters are found to be beneficial in this
case. The cold bath is likewise of singular service,
and ought never to be neglected when the patient
can bear it.
HICCUP.
The hiccup is a spasmodic or convulsive affection
of the stomach and diaphragm, arising from any cause
that irritates their nervous fibres.
It may proceed from excess in eating or drinking;
from a hurt of the stomach ; poisons ; inflammations,
or scirrhous tumours of the stomach, intestines,
bladder, midriff, or the rest of the viscera. In gan¬
grenes, acute and malignant fevers, a hiccup is often
the forerunner of death.
When the hiccup proceeds from the use of aliment
that is flatulent or hard of digestion, a draught of
generous wine, or a dram of any spirituous liquor,