202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rhoea can soon be brought under control, though the debility of the 

 patient should limit his first excursions to the precincts of his bedroom. 

 Care should, however, be taken not to abuse the partially restored vigor 

 of the digestive organs, especially during the period of deficient appe- 

 tite that often follows a colliquative condition of the bowels. Pro- 

 gressive doses of out-door exercise will gradually overcome that apathy, 

 and, when the stomach volunteers to announce the need of nourishment, 

 it can be relied upon to find ways and means to utilize it. 



But the problem of a complete cure becomes more complicated if 

 the bowels have been tortured with astringent drugs. Diarrhoea itself 

 is an asthenic condition, indicating a deficiency of vital strength, yet 

 nearly every health-exhausting poison of the vegetable and mineral 

 kingdom has been employed to paralyze the activity and, as it were, 

 silence the protest of the rebellious organs. Bismuth, arsenic, calomel, 

 opium, mercury, nux vomica, zinc salts, acetate of lead, and nitrate of 

 silver, are among the gentle " aids to Nature " that have been employed 

 to control the revolt of the mutinous bowels. An attempt to control 

 a fit of vomiting by choking the neck of the patient would be an analo- 

 gous mistake. The prescription operates as long as the vitality of the 

 bowels is absolutely paralyzed by the virulence of the drug, but the 

 first return of functional energy will be used to eject the poison. That 

 new protest is silenced by the same argument ; for a while the ex- 

 haustion of the whole system is mistaken for a sign of submission, till 

 a fresh revolt calls for a repetition of the coercive measures. In the 

 mean time the organism suffers under a compound system of starva- 

 tion ; the humors are surcharged with virulent matter, the whole 

 digestive apparatus withdraws its aid from the needs of the vital 

 economy, and the flame of life feeds on the store of tissue ; the patient 

 wastes more rapidly than an un-poisoned person would on an air-and- 

 water diet. In garrets, where the last piece of furniture had been sold 

 to defray the costs of a direful nostrum, I have more than once seen 

 victims of astringent poisons in a state of misery which human beings 

 can reach by no other road : worn out, corpse-colored, emaciated 

 wretches, with that look of listless despair which the eyes of a dying 

 beast sometimes assume on the brink of Nirvana. The first condition 

 of recovery is the peremptory abolition of the poison-outrage. For 

 the first three days prescribe nothing but sweetened rice-water, and 

 only tablespoonful doses of that ; give the stomach a sorely-needed 

 chance of rest. On the fourth and fifth day add a few drops of milk, 

 and toward the end of the week inspissate the broth to the consist- 

 ency of gruel. There are persons with whom milk disagrees in all its 

 forms ; for such prepare a surrogate of whipped eggs with sugar and 

 warm water — a tablespoonful every half -hour. Do not hope that the 

 stomach of a far-gone drug-martyr will at once tolerate even such 

 feather-weight burdens ; it will not repel them with the spasmodic 

 violence that characterized its reactions against a virulent nostrum, 



