Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1883 — THE FAMILY DOCTOE. [ARTICLE]

THE FAMILY DOCTOE.

Db. Labatin, who had a large experience with soldiers during the TurcoRusian war, recommends nitric acid as an application in chilblains. Equal parts of dilute nitric acid and aqua menth. pip. are penciled on the toes, at first daily, then twice a day. After three or four days a brownish scurf is formed, which is thrown off.— New York Medical Record. A distinguished physician, who had spent much time at quarantine, said that a person whose head was thoroughly washed every day rarely took contagious diseases; but where the hair was allowed to become dirty and matted, it was hardly possible to escape infection. Many persons find speedy relief for nervous headache by washing the hair thorougly in weak soda-water. I have known severe cases almost wholly curod in ten minutes by this simple remedy. A friend finds it the greatest relief in cases of “rare cold,” the cold symptoms entirely leaving the eyes and nose after one thorough washing ofthe hair. The head should be thorougnly dried afterward, and not exposed to draughts of air for a little while.—Circular.

What an Egg Will Do.—For burns and scalds nothing is more soothing than the white of au egg, which may be poured over the wound. It is softer as a varnish for a burn than collodion, and being always at hand can be applied immediately. It is also more cooling than the sweet oil and cotton which was formerly supposed to be the surest application to allay the smarting pain. It is the contact with the air which gives the extreme discomfort experienced from the ordinary accident of this kind, and anything which excludes the air and prevents inflammation is the thing to be at once applied. The egg is considered one of the best of remedies for dysentery. Beaten up slightly, with or without sugar, and swallowed at a gulp, it tends, by its emollient qualities, to lessen the inflammation of the stomach and intestine, and, by forming a transient coating on those organs, to enable nature to resume her healthful sway over a diseased body. Two, or at most three, eggs per day would be all that is required in ordinary cases; and since egg is not merely medicine but food as well, the lighter the diet otherwise and the quieter the patient is kept the more certain and rapid is the recovery.

Coffee and Digestion.—lt is not only true that we as a nation, drink too much, especially at our meals, as a meins of swallowing rapidly, impairing the digestive juices, but -that we do not always select the best drinks. We are far oftener controlled by a vitiated taste, than by judgment and conscience, while the human body is composed, in a great measure, of water, it is manifest that this pure fluid, distilled by the great Creator, in such lavish profusion, is the natural drink for both man and beast. Aside from the use and excessive use of the spices and salt, we should need but little drink, so far as artificial thirst is concerned, the natural demand being connected with the necessary exhaustion of the fluids of the body. As it now is, we seem to demand artificial drinks, among the most harmful of which is coffee. Neither tea nor coffee really afford any nourishment, as they are prepared, though they contain a little, while the cocoa is more nutritious than beefsteak, a slight objection to which, relatively, is the fact that it is an astringent, tending to induce constipation. Of coffee, Prof. Schurtz, of Berlin, Prussia, as a result of his experiments on digestion, says: “Of all fluids, the action of coffee is the worst, for the carbonization of a portion of its oil in the process of roasting not only renders it wholly indigestible, but also other food taken With it. The stimulating properties of the coffee so far increase the perisaltic action of the stomach that its contents are expelled before digestion is completed, which has led many to suppose that coffee aids digestion; when the fact is that it. greatly obstructs it, and causes the food to enter the bowels imperfectly digested, and is likely to produce irritation in those parts.” These views are corroborated by the observations of Dr. Beaumont, who enjoyed the best possible advantages for a thorough investigation.