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the medical guide.
15

Treatment.——Fomentation of warm water; bathing; with sugar of lead water; drop into the eye 2 or 3 drops of solution of nitrate of silver, 3 grains to the ounce of water, morning and night.

Observations.——Sometimes after the severity of the inflammation is subdued, specks remain on the eye that obscure vision; the solution of the nitrate of silver should be dropped into the eyes, or an eyewash consisting of 10 grains white vitriol and 15 grains common salt, disolved in a gill of spring water, putting a drop or two into the affected eye morning and night.

FAINTINGS, &c.

Causes.——Mental emotion; over blood-letting; hysterical affection, aggravated by disordered bowels; indigestible food, &c.; organic diseases of the heart; tight-lacing (very frequent).

Symptoms.——Paleness, and respiration suspended, the party being for the time in a state of insensibility; when animation returns, she is affected sometimes with convulsions, belching of wind, &c.

Treatment.——Hartshorn smelling salts; burnt feathers to the nostrils; dash cold water over face; admit a free current of air; relieve party from tight corsets,&c.

Observations.——Females are more liable to swoonings and faintings than males. The reason for this is their more susceptible organization, but a frequent cause is wearing tight stays, a practice which, while deforming the natural symmetry of the figure, exercises a most prejudicial influence on the health, and should be reprobated as much as the women of China crushing their feet into the compass of an ordinary snuff-box. When will the fair sex of these islands abandon this monstrously absurd practice so fraught with evil? not, we suspect, till a few spirited females will resolve to be singular, and discard tight-lacing as a species of suicide!