entery in Indian gaols, recommends one or two tea-spoonfuls of the following stock mixture every one or two hours until free gentle purgation is produced. It should then be continued sufficiently often to secure gentle purgation, and for one or two days after the mucus and blood have disappeared.
| ℞ | Magnesii sulphatis | ℥ij. | |
| Acidi sulphurici dil. | ʒiij. | ||
| Tinct. zingiber. | ʒiij. | ||
| Aquæ | ad | ℥viij. |
If the stools become watery the mixture must be stopped at once. The lessening of tenesmus and the production of copious, soft, fæculent stools are the test of the successful action of the sulphates.
Calomel.—Should these means fail to control a dysentery, and should the bloody mucoid stools persist and the griping and tenesmus continue, recourse may be had to calomel in combination with opium and ipecacuanha—a grain of each every five or six hours—the effect being watched and salivation avoided. Some give calomel from the outset as a routine treatment in dysentery, either in 5-gr. doses every six or eight hours, or in fractional doses every hour. This method was formerly much in vogue in Germany, and is probably best suited to the bacillary forms of the disease.
Bismuth and opium.—As a result of either line of treatment, the dysenteric symptoms may subside rapidly—perhaps entirely. Sometimes, although the stools become fæculent, and the mucus and blood disappear, diarrhœa remains. This generally quickly yields to a salicylate of bismuth (10-20 gr.) and morphia (112 gr.) mixture.
Other drugs.—Simaruba (Ailanthus glandulosa) sometimes succeeds where other measures have failed. It is a drug which, though nowadays neglected in Europe, is still much used in the East by so-called "dysentery doctors." Possibly it is specific, just as ipecacuanha is, as regards a particular germ type of dysentery as yet unidentified. It seems to be specially serviceable when the case has become subacute or chronic. To be effective, it requires to be given
