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Updated: May 31, 2025
My good friend, For favours to my son and wife, I shall love you whilst I've life, Your clysters, potions, help'd to save, Our infant lambkin from the grave. The infant lambkin was probably John Lamb, but of course it might have been Charles. The expression, however, proves that punning ran in the family. Lamb's library contained his father's copy of Hudibras.
When the stools are green, a few drams of magnesia, with one or two of rhubarb, according to the age of the patient, may be given with advantage; but the greatest benefit will be derived from clysters made of milk, oil and sugar, or a solution of white soap and water.
"Know, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that the life of knights-errant is subject to a thousand dangers and reverses, and neither more nor less is it within immediate possibility for knights-errant to become kings and emperors, as experience has shown in the case of many different knights with whose histories I am thoroughly acquainted; and I could tell thee now, if the pain would let me, of some who simply by might of arm have risen to the high stations I have mentioned; and those same, both before and after, experienced divers misfortunes and miseries; for the valiant Amadis of Gaul found himself in the power of his mortal enemy Arcalaus the magician, who, it is positively asserted, holding him captive, gave him more than two hundred lashes with the reins of his horse while tied to one of the pillars of a court; and moreover there is a certain recondite author of no small authority who says that the Knight of Phoebus, being caught in a certain pitfall, which opened under his feet in a certain castle, on falling found himself bound hand and foot in a deep pit underground, where they administered to him one of those things they call clysters, of sand and snow-water, that well-nigh finished him; and if he had not been succoured in that sore extremity by a sage, a great friend of his, it would have gone very hard with the poor knight; so I may well suffer in company with such worthy folk, for greater were the indignities which they had to suffer than those which we suffer.
All which conceits come now into my head, by the remembrance of a story was told me by a domestic apothecary of my father's, a blunt Swiss, a nation not much addicted to vanity and lying, of a merchant he had long known at Toulouse, who being a valetudinary, and much afflicted with the stone, had often occasion to take clysters, of which he caused several sorts to be prescribed him by the physicians, acccording to the accidents of his disease; which, being brought him, and none of the usual forms, as feeling if it were not too hot, and the like, being omitted, he lay down, the syringe advanced, and all ceremonies performed, injection alone excepted; after which, the apothecary being gone, and the patient accommodated as if he had really received a clyster, he found the same operation and effect that those do who have taken one indeed; and if at any time the physician did not find the operation sufficient, he would usually give him two or three more doses, after the same manner.
Laurence Sarkantyús, regularly every day deposited his round-headed bamboo cane in the doorway, rubbed his short-cropped grey hair all over with his pocket handkerchief for a minute or two, felt the respective pulses, wrote out prescriptions for unguents and syrups; ordered baths, blisters, clysters, and cold douches and all to no purpose, as both patients seemed to dwindle away more and more day by day.
"Know, friend Sancho," answered Don Quixote, "that the life of knights-errant is subject to a thousand dangers and reverses, and neither more nor less is it within immediate possibility for knights-errant to become kings and emperors, as experience has shown in the case of many different knights with whose histories I am thoroughly acquainted; and I could tell thee now, if the pain would let me, of some who simply by might of arm have risen to the high stations I have mentioned; and those same, both before and after, experienced divers misfortunes and miseries; for the valiant Amadis of Gaul found himself in the power of his mortal enemy Arcalaus the magician, who, it is positively asserted, holding him captive, gave him more than two hundred lashes with the reins of his horse while tied to one of the pillars of a court; and moreover there is a certain recondite author of no small authority who says that the Knight of Phoebus, being caught in a certain pitfall, which opened under his feet in a certain castle, on falling found himself bound hand and foot in a deep pit underground, where they administered to him one of those things they call clysters, of sand and snow-water, that well-nigh finished him; and if he had not been succoured in that sore extremity by a sage, a great friend of his, it would have gone very hard with the poor knight; so I may well suffer in company with such worthy folk, for greater were the indignities which they had to suffer than those which we suffer.
A tincture of it is very useful for the purpose of hastening the healing principle of wounds. Professor Morton says, that he considers it as the most valuable of the vegetable astringents. 'Clysters. Professor Morton gives an account of the use of clysters. The objects, he says, for which they are administered, are 1. To empty the bowels of faeces: thus they act as an aperient.
Give one pint of linseed-oil; clysters of soap and water should be freely used; and give plenty of linseed-tea to drink. When the urine is abundant, give one ounce of tincture of opium, with one drachm of powdered aloes, three times, at intervals of six or eight hours. This is a constitutional inflammatory affection of the joints, affecting the fibrous tissue and serous, or synovial membrane.
The titles of certain of the chapters are interesting, as illustrating the fact that our medical and surgical problems were stated clearly in the olden time, and thinking physicians, even six centuries ago, met them quite rationally. There is, for instance, a chapter headed "Against Colic and the Iliac Passion," immediately followed by the subheading, "Method of Administering Clysters."
A blister should be employed as soon as possible, and mild emollient injections of gruel or barley water, till stools be obtained. The patient should be placed between blankets, and supplied with light gruel; and when the violence of the disorder is somewhat abated, the pain may be removed by opiate clysters.
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