Typical Home Remedies

Glancing through the pages of this family adviser, we note here and there mention of, and recommendations for, such drugs as the following: prussic acid, “administered with advantage in consumption for allaying the cough”; asafoetida, “a medicine very serviceable in those hysterical affections to which delicate females are liable”; calomel, which is recommended as a cathartic, “children requiring larger doses in proportion than adults”; lunar caustic, “employed internally in epilepsy and externally for lotions”; ipecacuanha, to produce perspiration in colds, no medicine “more useful in the family than this”; laudanum, “for procuring sleep”; and nux vomica, “administered to excite the nervous system, especially in palsy.”SHM 22.1

A Dr. Chapman is quoted as recommending the use of tobacco as a remedy for the affections of the lungs, “the vapor to be produced by smoking a cigar,” and advising “that the patient should frequently draw in the breath freely, so that the internal surface of the air vessels may be exposed to the action of the vapor.”—Ibid., 24, 35, 43, 48, 88, 108, 165.SHM 22.2

Pity the poor youngster who had croup in those days, and whose parents consulted another authority on the subject of home treatment. He would find by sad experience that for this affliction “the remedies principally relied on are bleeding, emetics, and calomel.” Before beginning such heroic treatment on the poor victim, his parents probably would mark, and during the treatment would frequently consult, the place in the book where were found the following directions:SHM 22.3

“Let the little patient be bled very freely at the commencement of the case. Then give to the child of three years old or upwards a teaspoonful of antimonial wine [made by dissolving a scruple of emetic tartar in a pint of sherry wine], and repeat it, if necessary, in half an hour. If the second dose does not cause vomiting, double its quantity, unless the case be very mild. ... The vomiting should be encouraged by warm drinks, and the nausea should be continued for a few hours.”—Dr. J. Boyd, in Family Medical Adviser, 118. Philadelphia: 1845.SHM 22.4

It was during this period of general ignorance of the laws of life and health that the youthful pioneers of the advent movement were laying the foundations of a work that was to fit men and women for translation at the second coming of Christ. And for that fitness it was necessary that there be not only spiritual and mental, but also physical, reform.SHM 23.1

Those privileged to have a personal acquaintance with many of those pioneers remember most of them as men of vigor and endurance. Although some of them curtailed their lives by overwork, yet they seem to have been endowed with remarkable physical powers. However, almost without exception, there was a time in their earlier life when the vital forces were burning low because of physical ailments due to their lack of knowledge of some of the elementary principles pertaining to the maintenance of good health.SHM 23.2