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[Sidenote: Danger of physicking by amateur females.]
I have known many ladies who, having once obtained a "blue pill"
prescription from a physician, gave and took it as a common aperient two
or three times a week--with what effect may be supposed. In one case I
happened to be the person to inform the physician of it, who substituted
for the prescription a comparatively harmless aperient pill. The lady
came to me and complained that it "did not suit her half so well."
If women will take or give physic, by far the safest plan is to send for
"the doctor" every time--for I have known ladies who both gave and took
physic, who would not take the pains to learn the names of the commonest
medicines, and confounded, _e.g._, colocynth with colchicum. This _is_
playing with sharp-edged tools "with a vengeance."
There are excellent women who will write to London to their physician
that there is much sickness in their neighbourhood in the country, and
ask for some prescription from him, which they used to like themselves,
and then give it to all their friends and to all their poorer neighbours
who will take it. Now, instead of giving medicine, of which you cannot
possibly know the exact and proper application, nor all its
consequences, would it not be better if you were to persuade and help
your poorer neighbours to remove the dung-hill from before the door, to
put in a window which opens, or an Arnott's ventilator, or to cleanse
and lime-wash the cottages? Of these things the benefits are sure. The
benefits of the inexperienced administration of medicines are by no
means so sure.
Homoeopathy has introduced one essential amelioration in the practice of
physic by amateur females; for its rules are excellent, its physicking
comparatively harmless--the "globule" is the one grain of folly which
appears to be necessary to make any good thing acceptable. Let then
women, if they will give medicine, give homoeopathic medicine. It won't
do any harm.
An almost universal error among women is the supposition that everybody
_must_ have the bowels opened once in every twenty-four hours, or must
fly immediately to aperients. The reverse is the conclusion of
experience.
This is a doctor's subject, and I will not enter more into it; but will
simply repeat, do not go on taking or giving to your children your
abominable "courses of aperients," without calling in the doctor.
It is very seldom indeed, that by choosing your diet, you cannot
regulate your own bowels; and every woman may watch herself to know what
kind of diet will do this; I have known deficiency of meat produce
constipation, quite as often as deficiency of vegetables; baker's bread
much oftener than either. Home made brown bread will oftener cure it
than anything else.