Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends preparations containing opium, laudanum, morphine, or similar narcotics — in some cases for children. These substances are dangerously addictive, easily fatal in overdose, and strictly controlled by law today.
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.
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Expectorants
Medicines that promote the secretion of the tracheal and bronchial mucus. According to Dr. Good, true expectorants are those medicines which rather promote the separation of the viscid phlegm with which the bronchiæ are loaded, than simply soften and dilute it ; though these are also treated as expectorants by many writers. Numerous articles of the materia medica have been denominated expectorants, of which the following are the principal Tartarized antimony, ipecacuanha, squills, garlic, assafætida, ammoniacum, the oily resins, the balsams of tolu and Peru, benzoin, styrax, benzoic acid, the fumes of vinegar, tar, and of many of the volatile oils, and the smoke of tobacco and stramonium.
Chlorine and ammoniacal gases have also been called expectorants. Medicines of this class are commonly employed in pulmonary complaints and affections of the air-tubes, attended by a vitiated state of the mucus, or an imperfect performance of the natural functions of the secretory vessels. (Cooley.) Of all classes of the materia medica, none are more uncertain in their action than expectorants. (Pereira.) The act of ejecting matter from the chest is called expectoration.