THE PRACTICE OF CHEMISTRY

BY DR. JOHANN HARTMANN

Cancer of the Nostrils.

Cancers of the nostrils are treated as other cancers are (meaning only those that are ulcerated). The remaining types, which are painful and ulcerous, should not be touched. Nevertheless,
Arsenic Water

Arsenic Water is very effective here. It is made in this way: take 2 ounces approx. 56 grams of white arsenic and an equal amount of pure saltpeter. Let them be fixed together in a crucible over a wheel fire a fire that surrounds the vessel, so that at the end everything is liquefied. (Note: the smoke must be carefully avoided, therefore this operation should be done outdoors). When everything has cooled, the arsenic will be very white. This operation should be performed a second and third time with an equal portion of saltpeter. From this arsenic, let an oil be made per deliquium by allowing it to liquefy in a humid place. Let only enough of this be dissolved in plantain water or peach water so that the mixture itself can be tasted on the tip of the tongue.

Polyp.

For a polyp a growth in the nasal passage, in addition to the common remedies, the most effective treatment (after necessary preliminaries) is provided by tents small plugs of lint or absorbent material made of gentian root smeared with the following ointment: 2 ounces of goose fat, a sufficient quantity of mallow leaves, and a sufficient quantity of marshmallow root. Boil them together, then squeeze them through a cloth to make an ointment. Alternatively, take 2 ounces of fresh butter, capon fat, and olive oil, as much of each as you please; add a little wax to make an ointment.
In either of these ointments, mix precipitated mercury, or arcanum corallinum red mercuric oxide, or even mercurius vitae antimony oxichloride. For example, in half an ounce of ointment, use half an ounce of mercury, or even up to one ounce. When this ointment is prepared, smear it onto the gentian root tents and insert them into the nostrils, if they still have some space. If not, simply smear the hanging polyp several times, and do this until it is entirely consumed.

Stinking of the Nostrils.

A persistent foul odor from the nostrils is difficult to cure. It arises from an abscess or putrefaction in the sensory organ of smell itself or in the ethmoid bone.

Loss of Smell.

For a lost sense of smell, a specific remedy is Extract of Marjoram, taken every day on an empty stomach and in the evening after general cleansings, in a dose of half an ounce or even one ounce. Also, Balsam of Marjoram skillfully made and mixed with the Extract, or taken by itself in doses of 6 or 7 grains often in wine. Even the oil, taken moderately at 2 or 3 grains sometimes, completely removes the disease.
Sneezing powders are also effective, especially when the fault lies in an obstruction of the ethmoid bone.

The Cold.

Concerning the coryza common cold or running nose, see above under Catarrh.
Here also Gum Anima a resin from the West Indian locust tree or its oil is effective when used as a fumigant over coals. Also, tobacco sprinkled with a few drops of anise oil and taken in the common manner likely as snuff or smoked.

Nosebleed.

Freshly pressed juice of yarrow (the powder is less effective) excites nosebleeds; likewise spearwort (but with less efficacy) when the jugular veins are lightly constricted. See Pietro Bayro in the chapter on the polyp.
If you wish to stop the same, the closest remedy is:
1. Take the smoke from hare's hair growing under the belly, or the tips of the tail original: "die vveissen haar," meaning the white hair, as found in the Xenia of Paracelsus.
2. The powder of a dried toad blown into the nostrils, or placed on rags, or a whole toad carried under the armpits, stops a nosebleed.
3. Flowers of the small daisy held in the patient's hand for a while stop the blood. Otherwise, these same flowers dissolve and consume coagulated and putrefying blood outside the veins with a wonderful property if used in food (even in the most distant parts, for example, under the fingernails).
4. Stalks of fennel flower original: "Melanthii" applied or carried also stop the blood.
5. Opiated laudanum either taken internally or pushed into the nostrils with pills.
6. A silver plate (for example, a Thaler a large silver coin) applied very firmly between the eyebrows helps immediately.
7. The following Extract of Saffron of Mars an iron preparation stops bleeding,
Extract of Saffron of Mars.

if 3 drops of it are given with plantain water. Take 2 ounces of Saffron of Mars iron oxide and 1 ounce of iron filings, then gradually and successively pour on 3 to 8 ounces of Aqua fortis nitric acid. Let them digest overnight in ashes or sand. Then, using an alembic a distilling apparatus, draw off the nitric acid until dry. To the remaining powder, pour on Spirit of Wine ethanol to the height of two fingers. Digest the whole until it turns red. Then decant it from the dregs and distill it in a Mary’s Bath or in ashes until it reaches an oily consistency.
A hare caught in the month of March, dried and powdered, and the powder put into the nose or a wound, works similarly.

Critical Nosebleed.

A critical nosebleed a bleeding that occurs at the turning point of a disease should not be hindered unless the quantity of blood overpowers the patient's strength. Morbid unhealthy or diseased bleedings, however, must be cured right at the start. Therefore, one should proceed to things that divert the blood to other parts of the body. If the symptoms allow, the external vein of the arm should be cut, and a large quantity of blood should not be taken at one time, but repeatedly, with one hour always intermitted according to the strength of the patient.
Large cupping glasses should be applied to the hypochondria the upper abdomen and between the shoulder blades. The patient should avoid all sharp and hot things, and drink pomegranate wine diluted with chalybeate water iron-rich water and thickened currant juice. He should take this care at intervals. He should use cooling syrups, such as Syrup of Coral of Quercetanus, diluted with water of chicory, endive, purslane, or water lily, with an added ounce or more of Sal Prunella purified saltpeter. The patient should also take some sealed earth medicinal clay and Armenian bole a red medicinal clay with Diatrian Santalon a sandalwood-based compound in the form of a heart-water with confection of hyacinth or in the form of a bolus with runners.
Also, a cooling epithema a liquid compress should be applied externally to the liver made from water of endive, chicory, roses, and water lily, with red rose flowers, sandalwood, and camphor added, along with seeds of purslane, sorrel, and chicory, with a little vinegar. Immediately after this, on the following morning, he should be purged with an infusion of rhubarb with solutive syrup of roses or chicory with rhubarb.
Astringent and cooling medicines should also be applied to the forehead and temples. In particular, let a cataplasm poultice be made from Armenian bole or dragon's blood a red plant resin mixed with egg white. A tent of 10 or 6 grains of the medicine with a shorn cloth should be inserted, or two pills of laudanum should be made to block both nostrils. Or donkey or pig dung dissolved in rose vinegar should be put into the nostrils, which has been found to stop the flow by smell alone, or it can be included in little bags with rose water and camphor to be smelled.
To the neck, where the jugular veins ascend, apply linens dipped in frog-spawn water original: "aqua sperniolae" in which a little camphor and sugar of lead have been dissolved.
The same water is useful for compresses for the liver and the testicles, which can be wrapped in linens soaked in rose vinegar in which the frog-spawn compound is dissolved. Indeed, it is convenient to wash the face and nostrils with said water because it coagulates the blood; thus it can be most conveniently applied with linens to any bleeding from wounds. See the notes on Coral.

Defects of the Face and Mouth, Redness of the Face.

For redness of the face: 1. Respect must be given to the liver, from whose imbalance such unusual rednesses usually arise. Therefore, chicory root used whole in an infusion for some time, after general purges, corrects the liver. Other roots do the same.
Afterward, proceed to local remedies, which are: half an ounce of mastic and an equal amount of white frankincense. Boil these with Spirit of Wine, with which you should wash the face morning and evening for 2 or 3 months. Once or twice a month, let there be a scarification light scratching or lancing of the ear. Especially, every month the whole face should be smeared with camphorated ointment of ceruse white lead, and washed in turn

in turn with a lye made from the ashes of cabbage stalks, and finally the redness will cease. Many such remedies are in the Antidodotarium of Wecker.

Pustules of the Face

For pustules on the face, the same remedies are effective, but more excellent is menstrual blood (from a virgin or otherwise a healthy young woman) dissolved in warm water. If the face is washed with this for several days toward evening when going to bed, and the whole face and forehead are dried, the pustules fall off as a new skin grows underneath, and the redness vanishes.
Toad Oil

2. To root out the same pustules and morphea blotchy skin discolorations of the entire face, Toad Oil is wonderfully effective. It is made in this way: Take live toads (on account of the "signature" of the spots on the toads), 3 or 4 of them, and boil them in 2 ounces of olive oil for a full hour, then strain it. Smear the face with this oil several times, but only once each day. After a few days, the pustule falls off and the morphea is healed. This oil is the strongest of all; therefore, it should be used when nothing else works.

Pimples

For vari pimples or blemishes, nothing is more excellent than oil of laurel berries smeared on often.

Bruises

For bruises original: "sugillatio", the application of fresh beef is uniquely beneficial. Likewise, that thicker shop-paper original: "Charta Emporetica," a coarse wrapping paper applied with melted fat heals them within a few hours.

Freckles

Freckles original: "lentigines" are successfully cured with Oil of Wax original: "Honigflechten" and Oil of Tartar per deliquium if mixed in equal parts and smeared on the freckles of the face.

Skin Rashes, Lichen

In the same way, impetigo scabby eruptions, lichens dry, scaly rashes, and migrating rashes original: "volatica" of the face are cured.
(And not only for various defects of the face, but also for beauty, Cosmetics are praised, and indeed

Virgin's Milk, Take Gum Benzoin

Calamite Storax, of each 1 ounce.
Pour on 8 ounces of rectified Spirit of Wine. Let it stand in digestion until the Spirit of Wine is tinted with a very deep red color. Separate the tincture by pouring it off and keep it for use. If you pour a little of this tincture into clear water, rose water, or bean-flower water, it will immediately turn milky, which is why it is called Virgin's Milk, with which the face should be washed.

Cosmetic Magistery of Bismuth

Take 1 ounce of the best white powdered bismuth, pour on 2 or 3 ounces of Aqua fortis nitric acid, or as much as suffices for dissolution. Pour out the solution and precipitate it into a white powder with salt water. Wash this powder often with warm water so that it is properly sweetened desalinated, and keep it dried. This powder can be mixed with the waters mentioned above or with pomade ointment for smearing on the face. Mercurial cosmetics, such as white precipitate, are not safe enough.)

Warts

Warts of the face are removed in the same way as those on the rest of the body.

Cynic Spasm

The treatment for Cynic Spasm a facial twitch or convulsion that mimics a dog's snarl is the same as for a general spasm.

Paralysis of the Lips

Paralysis of the lips is cured like common paralysis, concerning which see above under Paralysis.

Fissures of the Lips

In curing cracked lips, the fat that drips from wooden spoons used for cooking in the kitchen is effective if they are moved slightly toward the fire and roasted. Smearing the cracks with this fat cures them.

Numbness of the Teeth

For teeth set on edge numbness or sensitivity, let the dull teeth be rubbed with salt, or let a woolen cloth or a fur cap be chewed.

Blackness of the Teeth

To avoid blackness of the teeth, especially avoid vinegar and very hot foods.
Likewise, let the tartar and impurities of the teeth be removed often by washing the mouth after eating, or with wine.
Then, blackness and foul colors of the teeth are conveniently removed in this way: take half an ounce of spring water and dilute Spirit of Vitriol sulfuric acid in it. Or take water or Spirit of Alum, as much as needed so it does not become too sour. With this wash, every morning and evening, rub the teeth diligently with a woolen cloth, then rub them with Magistery of Coral or with this powder:
Take: Jawbones of a Pike fish, white coral, burnt hartshorn, burnt alum, orris root, half an ounce each; salt gem, 1 drachm approx. 3.5 grams. Mix to make a tooth powder.

Blackness of the teeth and tongue from eating cherries or blueberries is immediately removed by a fumigation of sulfur candles original: "Schvvefelfeuchen", provided the throat is closed because of the harmful fumes.
(Note: dirt and blackness of the teeth are indeed immediately and easily wiped away by acid spirits, but if we use them too often, the teeth are easily eroded like bony substances and made fragile, and later they appear with even greater blackness and filth. Therefore, you should hold in high esteem Sugar of Alum, concerning which see a little below, used either by itself or mixed with pumice or prepared red coral as a tooth powder.)

Mobility of the Teeth

The following peculiar and specific remedy removes the looseness of teeth:
Take: 1 drachm of acorns, half an ounce of galls, burnt alum, and acacia juice, half an ounce each; red rose leaves, half a handful.

Boil with 8 ounces of red wine until it is reduced by the width of one finger, then strain. Let the teeth be washed with this decoction several times daily; they will be fixed again and rendered immobile.

Toothache

Toothache arising from any cause is removed by a certain specific property of the root of sharp dock (collected in the spring before sprouting is best, as is familiar to me). Apply it dried to the aching tooth.
The root of burdock does the same, but more mildly; it removes pain suddenly and extracts superfluous humors more effectively.
If the pains arise from distillations rheum or nasal drip, a decoction of the root of greater nettle prepared with a little shaved nutmeg and saffron in burnt wine brandy and vinegar in equal parts, and held warm in the mouth at the place of the pain, wonderfully extracts the fallen humors. At the beginning, the pain seems to increase, but a little later it is mitigated and ceases.
A decoction of Guaiac a medicinal wood prepared with wine and water does the same. In the same case, a decoction of wild thyme is excellent (especially if from a distillation) or the water of the same used as a gargle.
(The following sprinkled powder soon calms toothaches:
Sugar of Alum

Take 2 or 3 ounces of crude alum and through a retort a glass distillation vessel in sand over a slow fire, draw off the phlegm the watery part. Once done, stop, and when the retort has cooled, return the phlegm to the dried alum. After they have stood in digestion in a water bath for 24 hours, draw off the phlegm again. This labor of cohabitation returning a liquid to its solid residue, digesting, and drawing off the phlegm should be repeated seven times. Then, after the final exit of the phlegm, that which remains in the bottom of the retort, if exposed to the air in a cellar or a humid and cold place, turns into a liquor. Filter this and digest it for 12 days in ashes over a slow fire. Finally, through a cucurbit a gourd-shaped boiling flask in ashes, let all humidity be stripped away until it is dry. Sugar of Alum remains at the bottom.)

Painful Hollow Teeth

If the teeth are hollow and painful, or even for painful teeth without a cavity, Oil of Cloves is excellent...