Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts

Ten thousand receipts from the great Victorian household compendium — cookery, brewing, dyeing, gilding, fireworks, medicine, farriery and the rest of the useful arts, in one volume.

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Whitlow, White Swelling

ture of muriate of iron, with seven ounces of dis- | gentle heat until a certain degree of fermentation tilled water. Apply as a lotion. takes place. This poultice is excellent for stimulating and cleansing foul ulcers. Contagious Ulcer peculiar to Soldiers and Seamen.

This ulcer generates a poison capable of converting other healthy ulcers into its own nature. It generally appears on the inner side of the leg, near the ankle. It exhales a putrid smell, whilst a thin acrimonious humor is discharged, which excoriates the neighboring parts; and fungous excrescences frequently shoot out. The limb becomes much swelled and very painful, whilst the sore bleeds on the slightest touch. If not checked the most fatal consequences are to be apprehended.

Treatment. The following remedies have been found most efficacious, viz., the carrot and yeast poultice as mentioned before; a lotion of tincture of myrrh, 1 ounce, with 7 ounces of decoction of bark, in equal parts; 1 scruple of sulphate of copper, or blue vitriol, in solution with distilled water, or with 8 ounces of lime-water; camphorated spirit of wine; camphorated vinegar; the cold saltwater bath; and the application of the juice of limes. If the sores remain irritable and painful, the hemlock and poppy fomentations are to be used; accompanied with the internal administration of Peruvian bark, and other tonic remedies. Ulcers and Sore Legs of Poor People.

Pure lime-water is one of the best dressings for ulcers.

The lotion made according to the following recipe, has been found very beneficial in cases of foul ulcers and sore legs of poor people. It has also succeeded (applied warm) in curing a fistulous ulcer: Take of green vitriol, ounce; alum, ounce; verdigris, drachm; crude sal ammoniac, 2 scruples. After reducing them to powder, put them into a new glazed pipkin, holding about a quart. Set it upon a slow fire, and increase by degrees till the ingredients boil up to the top two or three times. Then take it from the fire and set it to cool. Break the pipkin to get the stone out.

Stir them round all the time they are on the fire with a lath. The dust and the smoke should not come near the eyes, nose, or mouth. Put a piece of the stone, the size of a walnut, to a quart bottle of soft water. To use, shake the bottle and wet a piece of fine linen four times doubled. Lay it upon a new burn or old ulcer. The linen should always be kept wet with it. (For this receipt the late Emperor of France gave 10,000 louis-d'ors, after it had been approved of in his hospitals.] Malt Poultice.

Mix as much ground malt with half a pint of yeast as will make a cataplasm of moderate consistence. This poultice is gently stimulating, and very serviceable in destroying the fetid and disagreeable smell which arises from foul ulcers and gangrenous wounds.

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