On Diseases and Accidents of Farmers, 215 



or county. Scarcely a year passes, without the newspa- 

 pers announcing its prevalence in some part of the Uni- 

 ted States. The particular symptoms which mark the 

 disease, are frequent calls to stool, with tr flinty but bloody 

 discharges, attended with great pain in the bowels and 

 loins, and slight fever. The first point to be attended to, 

 is to open the bowels thoroughly, by mild purg stives. 

 Epsom or Glauber's salts, and for children, magnesia are 

 to be preferred. An ounce of eidier of the two first, dis- 

 solved in a pint of hot water, to which a grain of tartar 

 emetic should be added, may be taken at two doses, in 

 the course of an hour. They should be worked off with 

 thin gruel of corn-meal. A prejudice prevails among 

 some physicians, and with people generally, in favour of 

 castor oil, as a purgative in this disease, but ample expe- 

 rience warrants me in saying, that it is not supported by 

 fact. This prejudice is grounded upon the supposition, 

 that the oil will sheath the tender and inflamed coats of 

 the intestines, as well as open the bowels : but there is 

 more reason to believe, that the febrile state of the intes- 

 tines, and the acrimonious nature of their contents, will 

 render the oil rancid, and cause it to prove a source of 

 irritation and increase of disease. It has occurred to me 

 to know of the deaths of several persons by the dysentery, 

 in the year 1816, in Philadelphia, all of whom took re- 

 peated doses of castor oil. The safety of the neutral salts, 

 has been sanctioned by the practice of the most eminent 

 physicians ; exclusively of their purgative property, they 

 are proper from their sedative operation. If the pain in 

 the bowels be severe, and headach and fever attend, tv\ elve 

 ounces of blood should be taken away from a grown per- 

 son, and a proportional quantit} from a youth. Injections 

 of warm water, in which a portion of starch has been mix- 

 ed, and a tea-spoonful or two of laudanum, will ease the 

 pain in the bow^els. Equal parts of laudanum and sweet 



