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POISONS.
Dr. Mead says that the virtue of his medicine consists inpromoting urine. But how a poison should be expelled byurine, with only three or four doses of any medicine, howeverpowerful, is not easy to conceive. More time is certainly ne-cessary ; and here the defect of the doctor's prescription seemsto lie.
The East India specific is still more exceptionable on thisaccount.
As these and most other medicines, taken singly, have fre-quently been found to fail, we shall recommend the followingcourse.
If a person be bit in a fleshy part, where there is no hazardof hurting any large blood-vessel, the parts adjacent to thewound may be cut away. But if this be not done soon afterthe bite has been received, it will be better to omit it.
The wound may be washed with salt and water or a picklemade of vinegar and salt, and afterwards dressed twice a daywith yellow basilicon mixed with some red precipitate of mer-cury.
The patient should begin to use either Dr. Mead's medi-cine or some of the others mentioned above. If he takesMead's medicine, he may use it as the doctor directs for fourdays successively. Let him then omit it for two or three days,and again repeat the same number of doses as before.
During this course, he must rub into the parts about thewound, daily, one dram of the mercurial ointment. This maybe done for ten or twelve days at least.
When this course is over, he may take some doses of phy-sic, and wait a few days, till the effects of the mercury bequite gone off. He must then begin to use the cold bath, intowhich he must go every morning for five or six weeks. Butif the patient should feel cold and chilly for a long time aftercoming out of the cold bath, it will be better to use a tepidone, or to have the water a little warmed.
In the mean time, we would advise him not to leave off allinternal medicines, but to take either one of the boluses ofsnakeroot, assafœtida and campbire, or one of the powders ofnitre, camphire and snakeroot, twice a day. These may becontinued for a fortnight or three weeks longer.
If the person has gone through the above course of medi-cine, and no symptoms of madness appear, he may be reckonedout of danger. It will nevertheless be advisable, for the greater