Observations on climate, diet, and medical treatment, in France and England / [Charles Higgins].

  • Higgins, Charles, 1805?-1866.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on climate, diet, and medical treatment, in France and England / [Charles Higgins]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/120 (page 3)
    an excess has the use of these drugs been car- ried, that the habit has, as it were, infiltrated itself into every grade of society ; with but this difference, that in the upper classes, when a member of a family feels a little indisposed from a slight indigestion, or, it may be, from a ner- vous emotion, the anxious mamma rarely fails to administer at bed-time a five-grained calomel pill, followed in the morning by an ounce of purified Epsom salts, dissolved in a glass of tepid water; or if the mamma happen to be an Abernethian, it was five grains of blue pill at night, and in the morning a mixture of senna, salts, and two or three other refreshing ingre- dients; while among the lower classes there is some aloes added to the calomel, and Glauber salts are substituted for the purified Epsom! Putting but little confidence in the powers of nature, the English seem to despise her tiny and uncertain efforts, and consequently (to use a familiar phrase) always take time by the fore- lock, a merit which certainly no one will venture to deny them. with in these pages, they are intended to refer to the three kingdoms, and to the natives of them, unless when Ireland or Scotland should be nominally specified. B 2