254- THINGS WORTH KNOWING. 



The Use of Cathartics to be Avoided. 



In reference to these medicines, Dr. Wildie says : 



" In actual practice it so seldom happens that an aperient, such as 

 castor-oil, is required, that in my thirteen years' experience, during 

 which time an extensive public appointment gave me 1,300 fresh cases 

 annually, besides dispensary and private practice, I did not give an 

 aperient three times in a year, and then it was only a dose of castor- 

 oil. This conclusively proves the non-necessity of purgatives as used 

 by the old practitioners. 



" I regard the administration of purgative pills or aperient 

 mixtures as totally out of the question; worse than useless. I 

 have never prescribed such abominations since I abandoned the old 

 methods of treatment. 



" In case of being forced to give aperients by the patient's 

 obstinacy, let the following rules be strictly enjoined, viz: 



" First The use of an aperient is only a temporary expedient, 

 and will never cure the patient. 



" Secondly Aperients are never to be used when the patient 

 will use an injection. 



" Thirdly They should only be repeated after several days' 

 interval. 



" Fourthly They are never to be used where constipation is 

 only a symptom of fever, inflammatory action or the like, as in such 

 cases the only proper way to relieve the bowels is to cure the fever 

 or inflammation, after which the bowels will begin to act for them- 

 selves." 



Poisonous Soothing 1 Sirups. 



A writer in the Pacific Medical Journal recently made an 

 important and interesting expose of the dangers which attend the use 

 of patent " Soothing Sirups." His attention was first called to the 

 baneful effects and the enormous consumption of these sirups by an 

 article in the California, Medical Gazette. The author had been 

 called to see a child aged six months, apparently in a dying condi- 

 tion from the effects of some narcotic poison. He found that the 

 soothing sirup was the only medicine which had been administered, 

 and of it the child had taken two teaspoonfuls within ten hours. 

 There were remaining in the vial from which the two teaspoonfuls 

 had been taken, ten drachms, which yielded, on analysis by a skill- 

 ful chemist, nearly one grain of morphia and other opium alkaloids 

 to the ounce of sirup. Dr. Murray, in the article already referred 

 to says: " I have ascertained that there are about one hundred 

 thousand two-ounce bottles of it sold annually in this city, contain- 

 ing about one hundred and eighty thousand grains of morphia, 

 which are given annually to the infants of this State." If the infants 

 of California consume two hundred thousand ounces of soothing 

 sirup, it is but fair to assume that there is seventy-five times tK\t 



