Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends preparations containing opium, laudanum, morphine, or similar narcotics — in some cases for children. These substances are dangerously addictive, easily fatal in overdose, and strictly controlled by law today.
In addition, this page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Treatment (During the fit place)
During the fit place the patient's feet in a hot mustard foot-bath, and apply mustard plasters to the chest and back. Give one or two teaspoonfuls of Hoffmann's anodyne, in water, or forty drops of laudanum. If fainting, dash cold water in his face. Strips of linen, moistened with the solution below, applied several times a day to the breast-bone for a month, are said to have effected complete cures. They act by producing a crop of pimples, on the appearance of which the disease sometimes declines. Persons subject to this complaint should avoid all fermentable food, and excess in eating or drinking, taking care to live quietly and to keep the bowels open. Cupping and purging, followed by opium, to lessen the spasm, with the warm bath, and a perpetual blister or plaster of the tartar emetic ointment to the chest, are perhaps the best remedies that can be employed.
Tartar emetic, 1 drachm; spirits of camphor, an ounce; boiling water, 1 pint. Mix.
Dance of St. Vitus.