The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-08-04

perstitfon has long since passed, but
the treatment survives.
What laxative does is this: 1t
makes things uncomfortable, not for
the evil spirit, but for the partly di-
gested food. and this it hurries out OF
the system. Some laxatives such as
calomel are deadly poison and the
body must quickly get rid of them OF
die. Others, such as salts and seidlitz
powders. draw great quantities of fluid
| from the blood and tissues Others
cause extreme irritation to the delicate
membrane of the digestive system and
so produce their effects.
Quite obviously, unless the ailment
| calls for it, these medicines do moth
ing but harm. 1t should be remem-
matter" from the body generally. All
they effect is to hurry the partly di-
gested food out of the intestinal tract
Can this be a desirable end? Some
| times it may.
But the habitual dosing of a child
must result in damage to the digestive
organs, AMI grow more or less para
lysis, so that the dose has to be re-
| peated. A sensible mother should never
give her child any laxative medicine
unless she is quite sure that the child
quires 1t. If this rule were followed
| there would be much less dyspepsia
among grown-up people.
Another extraordinary fallacy is that
any medicine which cures enother's
headache, nervousness, Indigestion
etc, will have the same effect on all
cases of the kind. To take this head
ache it is said there are a hundred va
rieties of this disorder, and obviously
ltI
dieine given, perhaps by a doctor, cur
ing another's malady are about one
hundred to one.
A headache may be caused by amaze
mia or by excess of blood in the brain;
and these cases would require drugs Of
practically contrary virtues. 1t might
result from want Of food. too much
food, disease of the kidneys, a longest
ed liver, indigestion, fatigue, a de
pressed or excited state of the nervou.
system and the coming on of typhoid
fever, measles and many other dis
eases. -..-
+. OF course, unless one knew the exact
cause, and also the action of the medi.
cine, the chances are thousands to one
against q person dosing himself cor.
rectly.
Take coughs, for instance. Many o.
the cures used in home doctoring con-
tain opium, and as opium is a nerve
sedative they lesson and soon tn,
coughing. But if there is much dis
charge and you stop the cough the
chances are that the small brOnchia
ttubes become choked up. To every one
this is an evil. But to young children
| it is dangerous, and still more so to the
old.
The fact that a human body is out
of order has been compared to watch
If the watch stops because a screw i;
! lOoose you cannot make it go again by
putting in a new hair spring; if the
main spring be broken there is no use
in merely cleaning the watch.
| The belief that there are bad humors
in the body which must be forced out
often gives rise to a great deal of mis-
taken doetoring. Nearly everyone. fol
| instance, thinks it necessary to take
purifying spring medicine. Some peo-
pie give their children oatmeal, anC
when this causes Indigestion, as il
mostly always does, a rash on the Skin
betrays the injury. But the mother il
often quite pleased. She thinks these
are the bad humors coming out. They
really indicate an unhealthy state Of
| the body There are no bad humor:
to come out. What the child or the
man wants in the spring is to eat as
much vegetables and fruit as in othel
seasons Of the year. Vegetables ant
| fruit run short in the spring, and il
anything is wrong this is usually the
cause of it.
Then the poultice is used to draw out
| the bad hUmoTs In this case-the case
of a cut, burn, a boil-the bad hui
Tnors all come from outside. If the
wound be dirty one or two applications
of the poultice will clean it. But if the
process is continued the wound gets
into a fiabby. unhealthy state and is
very slow to heal.
Put a poultice on a boil and very
soon you will have a crop of boils all
around. The warm, moist poultice is
just the thing TO develop them. Boils
are not at all the bad humors escaping
from the body. They are caused by a
germ which attacks from the outside
and the poultice merely multiplies
them. What is wanted for all wounds
of the skin by cuts, bruises and burns
is an antiseptic lotion that will kill the
germs. And the same thing is true of
boils