Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/170

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162
ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE.
 

bath upon retiring, to arrest night sweats, or sponging with hot water. He adds:—

"It is important that patients should know that the sweats are greatly aggravated by opium in any form, and hence are increased by cough mixtures of any sort which contain this drug. Very simple remedies are often effective to relieve the most distressing cough, such as gargling of water in the throat, holding bits of ice in the mouth, taking occasional sips of strong lemonade, and similar remedies. As a general rule, patients run down and the disease progresses much more rapidly, after beginning the use of opium in any form. Sometimes it is best that the cough should be encouraged instead of being repressed. When the patient expectorates very freely, The cough is a necessary means of relieving the chest of matters which would seriously interfere with the functions of the lungs if retained, by filling up the bronchial tubes and air-cells. The kind of cough needing relief is an irritable, ineffective cough, unaccompanied by any considerable degree of expectoration. Loaf sugar, honey or a mixture of honey and lemon juice, and other simple, familiar remedies are often effective in relieving such a cough. *****

"It is perhaps needless to add that the numerous quack remedies for consumption advertised in the newspapers are wholly without merit. There is no known drug which will cure this disease, or in any certain degree influence its progress. Numerous remedies have been recommended as curative, but not one has thus far stood the test of experience."

Displacements of the Uterus:—These conditions are not among those for which alcoholic liquors are likely to be advised by a physician, but women frequently resort to Lydia Pinkham's Compound and other alcoholic preparations in the vain hope of finding the relief so positively promised in the nostrum adver-