Baths and Fomentations. 2599.

Fomentations are generally used to effect, in a part, the benefit produced on the whole body by the bath; to which a sedative action is occasionally given by the use of roots, herbs, or other ingredients; the object being to relieve the internal organ, as the throat, or muscles round a joint, by exciting a greater flow of blood to the skin over the affected part.

Apply fomentations of flannels wrung out of boiling water and sprinkled with spirits of turpentine to the part, and give wine and sal-volatile in such quantities as the prostration of strength requires; always bearing in mind the great fact that you have to steer between two quicksandsdeath from present prostration and death from future excitement, which will always be increased in proportion to the amount of stimulants given.

When the breathing is very laboured and difficult in consequence, from fifteen to twenty leeches are to be immediately applied to the outside of the throat, and when they drop off, warm poppy fomentations constantly kept to the part.

If inflammation should take place, it is to be treated by applying leeches and warm poppy fomentations to the part where the pain is most felt, and giving two tablespoonfuls of the fever mixture every four hours.

The after-treatment is the same as that for acids and alkalis; the principal object in all these cases being to keep down the inflammation of the parts touched by the poison by means of leeches, warm poppy fomentations, fever-mixtures, and very low diet. 2661.

Fomentations of warm oil of turpentine, if they can be obtained, should be put over the whole of the belly.

The other symptoms are to be treated on general principles; if they are those of depression, by brandy-and-water or sal-volatile; if those of inflammation, by leeches, fomentations, fever-mixtures, &c. &c. 2667.

These fomentations are to be applied in the following manner:Dip a good-sized piece of flannel into a pail or basin full of hot water or hot poppy fomentation,six poppy heads boiled in one quart of water for about a quarter of an hour; wring it almost dry, and apply it, as hot as the patient can bear, right round the sprained part.

When the wound is a very large one, the application of warm poppy fomentations is better than that of the lint dipped in cold water.

He acted that day, says the Laureat, with unusual spirit, and briskness, by which he obtained universal applause; but this could not prevent his paying a very dear price for these marks of approbation, since the gouty humour, repelled by fomentations, soon seized upon the nobler parts; which being perhaps weakened by his extraordinary fatigue on that occasion, he was not able to make a long resistance:

Fomentations or sponges, wet in some decoctions, &c., epithemata, or those moist medicines, laid on linen, to bathe and cool several parts misaffected.

Besides those fomentations, irrigations, inunctions, odoraments, prescribed for the head, there must be the like used for the liver, spleen, stomach, hypochondries, &c.

Fomentations to the hypochondries are very good, of wine and water in which are sodden southernwood, melilot, epithyme, mugwort, senna, polypody, as also [4401]cerotes, [4402]plaisters, liniments, ointments for the spleen, liver, and hypochondries, of which look for examples in Laurentius, Jobertus lib.

" Outwardly taken to expel winds, are oils, as of camomile, rue, bays, &c.; fomentations of the hypochondries, with the decoctions of dill, pennyroyal, rue, bay leaves, cumin, &c., bags of camomile flowers, aniseed, cumin, bays, rue, wormwood, ointments of the oil of spikenard, wormwood, rue, &c.

At that moment he was untied, hot fomentations were used to revive him, restoratives were administered, and, as soon as he had recovered a little strength, he was again put to the torture, which went on thus for six consecutive hours.

They begged me to prescribe for different cases of illness: bad ears, eruptions of the skin, and in the children, a considerable tendency to scrofula, etc. I ordered lukewarm baths, frequent fomentations, and the use of oil and soap, applied externally and rubbed into the body.

This gentleman had a large Clydesdale horse under his care for a bad sand-crack in front of the near hind-foot, and, as the lameness was extreme, he adopted his usual method of treatmentviz., rest, fomentations, poulticing, and the making of the V-shaped section through the wall, and subsequently the application of an appropriate bar shoe to the foot, and repeated blisters to the coronet.

Should no improvement be noticed at the end of three weeks or a month, or should the grooves become filled from the bottom (which they do remarkably fast), then the incisions must be deepened, the exercise reduced, and the fomentations or poulticing repeated.

At the same time, the animal should be slung, or, if non-excitable and inclined to rest, allowed at intervals to lie on a thick and comfortable straw bed, the cold fomentations during such intervals being discontinued.

These flowers are also frequently used externally in discutient and antiseptic fomentations, and in emollient glysters.

The leaves are frequently employed in discutient and antiseptic fomentations; and have been recommended also in lotions and unguents for cutaneous eruptions, and the falling off of the hair.

L. E.The leaves are ranked the first of the four emollient herbs: they were formerly of some esteem, in food, for loosening the belly; at present, decoctions of them are sometimes employed in dysenteries, heat and sharpness of urine, and in general for obtunding acrimonious humours: their principal use is in emollient glysters, cataplasms, and fomentations.

They are also employed in medicated baths and fomentations.

Pour upon this 5 oz. of cold water, which will dissolve it entirely, forming the solution of pyrothonide, which is used in a more or less diluted state, as may be requisite, for collyria, fomentations, &cMedical Journal.