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 describes practices involving highly flammable materials in ways that create a serious risk of fire or explosion.
In addition, 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.
Home › Medical Receipts › Pulmonary Balsam
Pulmonary Balsam
hound plant, comfrey root, blood root, elecampane root, wild cherry bark, spikenard root, penny-royal plant, of each 4 ounces.
Pour 3 quarts boiling water upon them; inplan which combines the greatest degree of fuse for 3 hours; then heat the water again, efficiency with universal applicability, con- and pour it upon the plants to infuse 5 or 6 sists in the use of a simple hot-air bath, which hours. Sweeten with sugar candy. It is the patient can have in his own bed-room. very serviceable in diseases of the lungs, All that is required is a tin spirit lamp, with chronic coughs; it removes constriction of a sufficiently large wick, and holding suffi- the chest by promoting expectoration. Take cient spirit to burn for half an hour. The half a small tea-cupful 3 or 4 times a day, or patient sits undressed in a chair with a lamp between his feet, rather than under the chair, care being taken to avoid setting fire to the blankets, of which an attendant takes two or three, and folds them around the patient from his neck to the floor, so as to inclose cool, add a tea-spoonful of paregoric elixir. him and the lamp, the hot air from which passes freely around the body. In from a quarter to half an hour there is usually a free perspiration, which may be kept up for a time by getting into bed between hot blankets. Headache, pain in the limbs, and other premonitory indications of a severe cold, may be entirely removed in the course of half an hour by the action of the hot-air bath. oftener if necessary.