Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
In addition, this page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Rubefacients
external agents employed in medicine for the purpose of stimulating, and consequently reddening, the part to which they are applied. All agents which, after a certain period, act as blisters may be made to act as rubefacients, if their time of action is shortened. The mildest rubefacients are hot poultices, cloths soaked in very hot water, moderately stimulating liniments-as, for example, soap-liniment, with various proportions of liniment of ammonia, or chloroform, etc. Spanish fly, in the form of Emplastrum Calefaciens, or warm plaster, in which the active ingredient is blunted by the free admixture of soap plaster, resin plaster, etc., is a good form of this class of agents. Capsicum or cayenne pepper, in the form of a poultice, is an excellent rubefacient; it is much used in the West Indies. Mustard, in the form of Cataplasma Sinapis, or mustard poultice, and oil of turpentine are perhaps the best of the ordinary rubefacients. The best method of employing turpentine is to sprinkle it freely on three or four folds of clean flannel wrung out of boiling water. The sprinkled surface of this pad is placed on the skin, and a warm dry towel is laid over the flannel.