Memoirs of Erasmus Darwin, M.D. 165 



*%nd ill clothed ; and who arc further weakened by eating 

 much salt with their scanty meal of insipid vegetable food, 

 which is seldom of better quality than water gruel, with a 

 little coarse bread in it. Scrophulous ulcers are difficult to 

 heal ; which is owing to the deficiency of absorption on their 

 pale and flabby surfaces, and to the general inirritabilky of- 

 the system. 



M.M. Plentiful diet of flesh-meat and vegetables with 

 small-beer. Opium, from a quarter of a grain to half a grain 

 twice a day. Sorbentia. Tincture of digitalis, thirty drops 

 twice a day. Externally sea-bathing, or bathing in salt and 

 water, one pound to three gallons, made warm. The ap- 

 plication of Peruvian bark in fine powder, seven parts, and 

 white lead (cerussa) in fine powder one part, mixed to- 

 gether and applied on the ulcers in dry powder, by means 

 of lint and a bandage,' to be renewed every day. Or very 

 fine powder of calamy alone, lapis calaminaris. If powder 

 of manganese ? 



Scirrkus oesophagi. — A scirrhus of the throat contracts the 

 passage so as to render the swallowing of solids impracti- 

 cable, and of liquids difficult. It affects patients of all ages, 

 but is probably most frequently produced by swallowing 

 hard angular substances when people have lost their teeth ; 

 by which this membrane is over distended, or torn, or other- 

 wise injured. 



M. Mi Put milk into a bladder tied to a canula or cathe- 

 ter ; introduce it past the stricture, and press it into the 

 stomach. Distend the stricture gradually by a sponge-tent 

 fastened to the end of whalebone, or by a plug of wax, or 

 a spermaceti candle, about two inches long; which 1 micht 

 be introduced, and left there with a string only fixed to it 

 to hang out of the mouthy to keep it in its place, and to re- 

 tract it by occasionally ; for which purpose the string must 

 be put through a catheter or hollow probang, wheal it is to 

 be retracted. Or lastly, introduces gut fixed to a pipe ; and 

 then distend it by blowing wind into it. The swallowing a 

 bullet with a string put through it, to retract it on the exhi- 

 bition of an emetic, has also been proposed. Externally 

 mercurial ointment has been much recommended. Poultice. 



L 3 Oiled 



