WOMAN’S COUNCIL TABLE. 
REMEDIES PERMISSIBLE IN HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE. 
I. 
IT is very difficult to dogmatically exclude 
certain remedies from household med- 
icine, simply because conditions may 
arise which would justify their employment, 
or other conditions which would render them 
positively harmful. What is said on this 
topic, therefore, will have to be taken in the 
light of a general rule rather than a specific 
statement concerning any individual case. 
One remedy which can be used with 
great frequency and often with great benefit 
in household medicine is that which is pop- 
ularly known as the sweet spirit of niter, 
which is employed, as many persons know, for 
the purpose of allaying moderate fever and 
nervous excitement, particularly when these 
symptoms arise in young children. It is 
given to a child in a dose of from ten to 
twenty drops, generally in cold water, and 
this maybe repeated every two hours during 
the night. As a rule it tends to increase the 
activity of the kidneys and also the activity 
of the skin, so that as the temperature falls 
the child frequently breaks out into a slight 
perspiration. These doses, or ones which 
are slightly larger, are entirely harmless in 
practically every disease which will be met 
with, and it is only when very large doses, 
amounting to several teaspoonfuls, are given 
at once that sweet spirit of niter has the 
power of doing great harm. In the dose of 
an ounce or two given by mistake it has 
caused death, so that it cannot be consid- 
ered an absolutely innocuous drug in any 
quantity. 
It is a curious fact that if given in very 
cold water, and when the patient is lightly 
covered, sweet spirit of niter will act chiefly 
on the kidneys, whereas if it is given in a 
hot lemonade to which has been added a 
little whiskey or brandy, and if at the same 
time the patient is warmly covered in 
BY H. A. HARE, M.D. 
bed, it will very frequently produce a pro- 
fuse sweat and so will tend to break up a 
forming cold. This drug should be bought 
in small quantities and a fresh supply ob- 
tained each time it is needed, as it is a 
remedy which loses its medicinal activity if 
it is exposed to light and air for any consid- 
erable period of time; moreover the cork in 
a bottle of sweet spirit of niter very soon 
becomes imperfect and as a result the med- 
icine loses its value. 
Brandy, whiskey, and other stimulants 
which depend upon the alcohol they contain 
for their chief medicinal activity, if used at 
all in household medicine, should be admin- 
istered with great caution. Aside from the 
abuse of these drugs from the moral stand- 
point they are very much abused by the 
friends of persons who are ill, particularly 
in the event of sudden illness. It seems to 
be the general idea of many persons that 
when an accident occurs whiskey or brandy 
is at once needed by the patient. As a gen- 
eral rule, unless they are ordered by a 
physician you should refrain from admin- 
istering these powerful stimulants, as they 
frequently do more harm than good. 
I well remember the case of a young man 
whose kneecap was dislocated on the foot- 
ball field, to whom his friends gave so much 
whiskey, because he was slightly faint from 
the accident, that by the time the patient 
was removed to the hospital he was so vio- 
lently intoxicated that nothing could be 
done for his damaged limb except to bind it 
up on a pillow and wait until the effects of 
certain sedatives quieted him. In another 
instance a member of the United States Con- 
gress who suffered from a slight attack of apo- 
plexy, which is a hemorrhage into the brain, 
received so much whiskey from solicitous 
friends that his heart was stimulated to in- 
creased exertion and after temporary im- Woman’s Council Table. 
300 
REMEDIES PERMISSIBLE IN HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE. 
provement the hemorrhage into his brain 
came on again and he speedily died, although 
there was reason to believe that the first 
hemorrhage was so small as not to be fatal. 
In this case the friends of the patient were 
to a great extent responsible for his death. 
When you have decided that whiskey or 
brandy are needed as stimulants in cases of 
faintness, you should remember that they are 
to be given in a hot and concentrated form, 
because all liquids which are taken into the 
stomach must be warmed to the temperature 
of the body before they are absorbed. If 
this were not true, after drinking a glass of 
ice-water we would be in the awkward pre- 
dicament of feeling the ice-cold fluid circu- 
lating through our blood-vessels. If, there- 
fore, you give whiskey or brandy in cold 
water it cannot be absorbed and exert its 
stimulating effect until the liquid is suf- 
ficiently warmed, and this may cause the 
loss of valuable time. Further, if you di- 
lute the brandy with too much water all the 
liquid must be absorbed before the patient 
gets the benefit of the stimulant. Thus, if 
the brandy is given in a tablespoonful of hot 
water the stomach can absorb this quantity 
in a very few minutes, whereas if it is given 
in a half pint of hot water it will take many 
minutes before this quantity of liquid will 
be taken up by the blood-vessels, and while 
it lies in the stomach it is as useless to the 
patient as if it lay in the palm of his hand. 
There are other stimulants which are 
largely prepared by manufacturing druggists 
or by retail druggists and widely advertised 
to the laity—such substances as the various 
wines or other preparations of cocoa or kola, 
both of which are very powerful nervous stim- 
ulants, closely associated in their action with 
that of caffeine, the active ingredient in 
ordinary coffee. It is of the greatest im- 
portance to remember that all these sub- 
stances are nervous stimulants which enable 
the body for a short time to put out a little 
more force, with a corresponding increase in 
exhaustion afterward. They are nothing 
but “ whips applied to the tired horse,” to 
make him do more work when in reality he 
should be obtaining rest. The person who 
resorts to these remedies, misled by the 
false assertions of those whose interest it is 
to sell them, will in the end find himself a 
nervous and physical wreck, because, like a 
careless banker, he has not only utilized his 
ordinary amount of strength, but called upon 
his reserves, which ought to have been kept 
for the proper maintenance of his vital 
functions. 
Physicians constantly see patients who 
would be horror-stricken at the idea of be- 
ing devoted to the whiskey or brandy bot- 
tle but who seem to think that there is no 
possible harm in resorting to wines of cocoa 
or kola with or without other ingredients. 
In many instances these wines contain such 
a large quantity of alcohol that in addition 
to the stimulating effect of their medicinal 
ingredients they produce an effect equiva- 
lent to that induced by a drink of whiskey. 
They should therefore be employed only un- 
der the direction of a physician, and should 
a physician order them the prescription call- 
ing for them is not to be renewed indefi- 
nitely, excepting under his advice. 
The same objections exist against the em- 
ployment of all those preparations of bro- 
mide and caffeine which are utilized under 
different combined names in the treatment 
of headache, and very much the same ob- 
jection exists, too, against many of the so- 
called headache powders or tablets which are 
now placed upon the market for the use of 
the unwary. These powders nearly always 
contain caffeine, which is a stimulant, and 
they also contain some drug derived from 
coal-tar, which when taken continuously or in 
overdose acts deleteriously upon the blood. 
I refer to such remedies as phenacetin, an- 
tipyrin, and acetanilide. It is true that they 
do relieve headache in many cases, but they 
should be used with caution. You should 
remember that a headache is a symptom, 
not a disease, and that it is a symptom of 
many diseases, ranging all the way from so 
serious affections as Bright’s disease and 
brain tumor to the headache due to lack 
of sleep. The removal of the symptom “head- 
ache ” in a person suffering from Bright’s 
disease may give such temporary relief 
that the patient will ignore the condition of 
his kidneys and go to a physician only when Woman’s Council Table. 
ANNUAL FLOWERS AND THEIR CULTURE. 
his state is so serious that his headache can- 
not be put aside by these means, and when 
it is perhaps too late for him to gain any 
benefit from treatment. In many instances 
of nervous headache, quiet, rest, a suitable 
amount of sleep, and a proper regulation of 
the diet are what the patient needs, and using 
headache powders is simply postponing the 
evil day, with compound interest to pay in 
the end. 
Finally, let me warn you in regard to 
the use of all stimulants. They never 
add nourishment to the body. As I have 
said before, they are “ whips ” which call 
into play those powers meant for reserve, 
and nothing can be more harmful than to 
keep on day after day whipping up a tired 
nervous system by powerful stimulants. 
It is hardly necessary to call attention to 
the fact that the constant use of opium or 
morphine or preparations containing this 
drug is exceedingly deleterious, and that it 
is very easy to slip into the opium habit by 
taking a little laudanum or morphia when- 
ever a slight pain or ache appears. I have 
known cases in which nervous women de- 
veloped a paregoric habit and in the end 
had to be treated not only for the opium 
habit but for the alcohol habit, because they 
took paregoric in such quantities that they 
became partially intoxicated from the alcohol 
which it contains. 
301 Woman’s Council Table. REMEDIES PERMISSIBLE IN HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE. 
BY H. A. HARE, M. D. 
II. 
IN the different stages of a disease fre- 
quent changes are made in the medicine 
prescribed for the patient, and thus, un- 
less great care is exercised, a stock of half 
emptied bottles accumulates. It is a very 
common thing for the economical housewife 
to retain these bottles and the medicine 
they contain, with the idea that they 
may be useful in some future illness, and 
this very frequently leads to a domestic pre- 
scribing of powerful medicines for conditions 
which seem to the untrained mind identical 
with those for which the physicians originally 
ordered them. Even supposing that the in- 
gredients ordered for the first case are suit- 
able to the treatment of the second, it is by 
no means certain that the quantities of the 
ingredients are suitable to both cases. Thus 
it is a self-evident fact that in cold weather 
every one needs an overcoat, yet every one 
does not need the same size of overcoat, and 
so in an illness all patients suffering from the 
same disease do not require'the same dose. 
Hence I would urge the importance of al- 
ways throwing away all bottles of medicine 
ordered by physicians after their use has 
been discontinued in the particular case for 
which they were ordered. 
By far the best means of doing good to 
members of your family who may be stricken 
with acute illness is by the use of external 
applications, which consist in liniments for 
rubbing, mustard plasters for counter-irri- .man’s Council Table. 
REMEDIES PERMISSIBLE IN HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE. 
409 
tants, or hot foot-baths for the purpose of 
overcoming congestions due to cold or other 
causes. The great mistake which is made 
in the use of the foot-bath ordinarily, when 
an endeavor is being made to break up a 
forming cold, is in allowing the patient to 
walk about the room after the bath is over, 
thereby chilling the very part of the body in 
which the circulation has been increased, 
and driving the blood back into the pre- 
viously congested blood-vessels. A hot foot- 
bath should not be given until the patient is 
actually ready for bed, and his feet should 
not touch the floor after they are removed 
from the water. While it is being given he 
should be wrapped in a blanket, and often 
the efficiency of the bath is increased by ad- 
ding to the water a teaspoonful to a table- 
spoonful of mustard flour. 
In regard to liniments, let me warn you 
of the fact that most of the liniments which 
have great power for good contain sufficiently 
large quantities of such powerful drugs as 
ammonia, chloroform, aconite, or opium to 
produce serious or even fatal poisoning if 
taken internally, and therefore bottles con- 
taining liniments should not be placed in 
the closet with bottles containing medicines 
for internal use. Further than this, lini- 
ment bottles should always be of a peculiar 
shape or bear a mark so startling or pecu- 
liar in its appearance as to call attention to 
the fact that the liniment is poisonous if 
taken internally. 
Again, I cannot urge you too strongly to 
avoid the dangerous practice of attempting 
to administer medicine when the light is not 
good. All medical men of large experience 
have frequently met with cases in which 
patients have placed a bottle of medicine to 
their lips and taken a draught of its contents 
in a dark room, under the impression that 
there was “only one bottle upon that shelf,” 
when in reality some other member of the 
family had placed other bottles there. In 
this way serious cases of poisoning have 
occurred. In other instances a wife rising 
in the night to give some medicine to her 
husband or child has picked up the wrong 
bottle in the dim light and administered a 
fatal dose, with terrible result. 
Where medicine is ordered in drops you 
should always obtain a medicine dropper 
from a drug-store and avoid attempting to 
drop the medicine from the bottle, as it 
requires a very steady hand and accurate 
counting to avoid a mistake. 
Again, you should remember that tea- 
spoons vary considerably in size, and should 
the medicine be a powerful one and be or- 
dered in teaspoonful doses the safest way is 
to administer it in a medicine-glass which 
has been carefully marked in quantities. 
Let me say a word also in regard to the 
application of counter-irritants. These are 
useful in the treatment of internal pains, 
such as colic arising from indigestion. They 
rarely do harm and often give great relief. 
The only harm of which they are capable is 
that the plaster, which is generally made of 
mustard, when applied too strong produces 
a burn on the skin. This burn is not only 
exceedingly painful but is frequently fol- 
lowed by pigmentation, or discoloration, of 
the skin, so that the person bears for many 
months afterward, and sometimes for life, 
such a discoloration as to mar his appear- 
ance. This is particularly apt to be the 
case if the patient have a particularly fine,, 
delicate white skin, and in the case of 
women who desire to wear low-neck dresses 
an application of a plaster to the chest dur- 
ing a severe cold may result in their being 
unable to wear anything but a high-neck 
dress for many months afterward. If this 
is the case the thanks which the patient was 
willing to offer for the first relief are soon 
turned into expressions of disgust which last 
very much longer than the protestations of 
delight at the relief of pain. 
Mustard flour when it is used in the prep- 
aration of a mustard plaster is best moist- 
ened by means of hot brandy or hot vin- 
egar, and it is always best to weaken it with 
ordinary wheat flour. When a plaster is ap- 
plied to a person who is suffering much pain 
the relief which it gives frequently permits 
the patient to go to sleep, and he may be 
so exhausted that he sleeps notwithstanding 
the burning sensation. It is under these 
circumstances that a burn of the skin most 
frequently results. 410 
Woman’s Council Table. 
A CHAUTAUQUA IDYL. 
One very useful form of counter-irritation 
in place of a mustard plaster is what is 
known as a turpentine stupe. This is made 
as follows: A piece of moderately thick 
flannel is folded several times until it is 
about six inches square. It is then allowed 
to soak in a bowl of very hot water and some 
turpentine is placed in a tin cup, which is 
then set in another bowl of hot water in or- 
der that the turpentine may be heated with- 
out its coming in contact with the flame. (For 
should you endeavor to heat turpentine over 
a gas-jet or over a stove it will probably 
explode and produce serious burns.) By 
means of a pair of scissors or a hairpin the 
folded flannel is quickly picked out of the 
hot water and dropped on a large towel, 
The ends of the towel are then twisted so 
that the flannel is thoroughly wrung out and 
freed from all excess of hot water. It is 
next dropped in the cup of turpentine and 
after being thoroughly saturated with the 
turpentine is wrung out in a towel a second 
time in order to get out the excess of this 
drug. The flannel is now moistened with 
the hot water and turpentine and yet is not 
so wet as to drip. It is placed wherever 
the pain may be and kept in position. In 
a very short time it produces a considerable 
amount of irritation, which usually relieves 
the pain. This application is quite capable 
of producing serious irritation, and should 
not be allowed to remain on too long, as it 
may blister a tender skin. Neither the tur- 
pentine stupe nor the mustard plaster should 
be applied to young children, as they pro- 
duce too much irritation, unless the turpen- 
tine in the one case or the mustard in the 
other is so thoroughly diluted as to lose a 
large amount of its irritant influence. If 
they are applied in too strong form they not 
only cause great pain and excessive irrita- 
tion of the skin but in addition may make the 
child exceedingly restless and even feverish. 
Finally, let me warn you against one com- 
mon habit, which is closely connected with 
the use of bottles containing old medicines, 
and is strongly condemned by occulists, who 
most frequently meet with it—the habit of 
preserving old medicine-droppers which 
have been used for dropping fluids into 
the eye. Quite frequently powerful medi- 
cines dry in these droppers and when they 
are used some months afterward for the in- 
troduction of eye-washes they produce symp- 
toms which very seriously alarm the patient 
and which may to some extent mystify the 
practitioner. 
A CHAUTAUQUA IDYL. 
BY JOHN HUSTON FINLEY. 
T HEAR ’mid voices of the night 
The swish of wave that tells the flight 
Of unseen boat across the lake, 
Upon whose shore I lie awake 
And think of things supernal, 
Dim visioning th’ eternal, 
Till sleep comes on. 
And then I sit by other lake ; 
I hear shore-echoes of the wake 
Of other craft. A spirit bark, 
Unseen, plows on athro’ the dark, 
That swift shall bear me thither, 
Whence it has brought me hither— 
When death comes on.