HERNIA. 371 



able an object in the treatment. Its operation may be 

 encouraged by clysters. A stimulant to the surface of the 

 belly will prove beneficial. The skin should be kept warmly 

 clothed; the legs bandaged with flannel; and a dry and 

 comfortable loose box be provided for the patient. His food 

 — after the working off of the physic — may consist of the 

 best hay and oats^ with a proportion of old beans ; the latter 

 being a mild and nutritive astringent. His drink ought to 

 be gruel ; or else linseed or hay tea. Should the bleeding, 

 and purging, and stimulating, fail to alter the nature of the 

 discharges or at all check them, we may try the effect of 

 mercurials, in alterative doses. I have given with great 

 advantage from one to two drachms of hijdrargyrus cum 

 cretd in combination with half the quantity of ipecacuanha 

 or Dover^s powder, twice a day, followed up by an occasional 

 clear-out of the bowels. Should neither the antiphlogistic 

 nor the alterative plan of treatment succeed, but the flux 

 be found still to continue, and in such a manner as to pro- 

 duce debility and all its evil consequences, we must have 

 immediate recourse to stringent medicines and opiates. The 

 compound chalk powder, in the doses recommended for 

 diarrhoea, may be first tried, with, should it be required, an 

 aromatic or opiate confection : in the event of this failing, 

 I know not to what one can have recourse — save it be to 

 the Pulv. Cretse, Comp. c. Opio, with more opium added to 

 it, or else to catechu. 



HERNIA. 



Hernia signifies a tumour in any part of the body, whose 

 existence is owing to the protrusion of some viscus, in part or 

 entire, through an aperture, out of its natural cavity. The 

 most usual form of hernia, is the one popularly called, in 

 man especially, a rupturej which consists of some viscus, 

 mostly intestine, which has slipped out of the cavity of the 

 abdomen. But hernia may exist of any of the viscera of the 

 thorax or pelvis, and take its distinctive name, either from 

 this circumstance, either from the name of the viscus itself, or 



