Plain home talk

It is a positive cure for all sprains, bruises, burns, flesh wounds, sore throat, stiff. neck, backache, broken breast, sore nipples, colic pains, cramps, earache, pains in all parts of the system; and greatly assuages the pains of hard and soft corns, boils, felons, carbuncles, rheumatism, neuralgia, etc.

It is a reliable medicine for children, who should not be dosed with drugs. This external medicine will answer in nearly every emergency in removing the ills common to infants. Applied to the stomach it relieves wind-colic, loss of appetite, sour stomach, etc. Applied to the bowels it softens excrementitious matter, relieving consti pation. It also cures diarrhoea, by relieving the intestinal irritation which causes it, if applied to the bowels. It is a valuable remedy for the nursery. Every young mother should have it.

It greatly promotes easy labour and should be conveniently at hand. Invaluable to every woman, especially just before, during and after confinement, for the relief of piles, cramps, abdominal muscular pains, excessive after-pains, sore nipples, broken breasts, etc., etc.

Price, by mail, prepaid, in 4-oz. can only, $1.00.

WHAT ITS FRIENDS SAY OF IT.

FROM THOSE WHO HAVE TRIED IT & ORDER MORE, For Everything.-"We cannot get along without your Magnetic Ointment, for it is the best medicine for everything that we ever used. One of our neighbors had sore breasts and my wife sent her some of it, which cured her in two days.'

For Rheumatism.-The Rev. Wm. Scott Downey, of New York, says: "I write from my sick chamber to say your Magnetic Ointment is one of the best remedies for the rheumatism, cuts, piles, carbuncles and corns that can be used. The more I use the Ointment the more I am astonished at its efficacy. For the good of our neighbors I advise you to set its value before the public. Were I young and in health I am quite certain I could make a living from being your agent, selling that Ointment particularly."

For Piles.-A lady patient writes: "I gave some of your Magnetic Ointment to a lady who was suffering with piles and it helped her so much that she desired me to sell her a bottle of mine, which I did. She said she wanted more.' A physician also writes: "I have found it to effect speedy relief in piles."

For Confinement.-A_lady writes: "I was confined July 2d, and had a very quick and easy time. I think your Ointment the best thing ever tried in confinement."

MAGNETIC ANTI-BILIOUS PILLS.

These Pills are an entirely vegetable substitute for mercury, and their action upon the liver is far superior to that of any drug. They are each electrically negative, and when taken into the stomach they stimulate the positive forces of the gastric juice to healthy action and attract the same forces of elimination to act upon the functions of the liver, causing a free discharge of bile into the intestinal canal, where its dissolving and lubricating properties soften the excrementitious matters and give them an easy and natural passage through the small intestines and lower bowel, while the properties of the medicine continue to act as a tonic upon all these enfeebled or inactive organs and canals. They infallibly cure bilious headache, ordinary or chronic constipation, want of tone of the stomach or bowels, promote digestion, cause healthy assimilation of nutriment, and, in fact, are the best family pill in use. Price, single box, by mail, 35 cents; three boxes, $1.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY OF THESE PILLS.

The following are quotations from bona-fide letters on file in DR. FOOTE's office, but the names are omitted as they are extracts from confidential letters:

"Your Anti-Bilious Pills are the best I have ever taken, and I would not be without them for ten times what they cost; in fact, I think they have done more for me than any other medicines."

"Please forward another dozen boxes of your Pills. They are the best I have ever used, and I have tried several kinds."

Address,

(Order Department.)

DR. E. B. FOOTE,

120 Lexington Avenue, New York.

A VALUABLE NURSERY

ARTICLE,

Which, when tied about the neck of a child during sleep, is
WARRANTED IN ALL CASES TO
PREVENT CROUP.

Invented by DR. E. B. FOOTE and sold by him for twenty years. It has proved to be perfectly satisfactory in thous ands of families, and many mothers write that it saves fifty dollars in doctors' bills every year.

Sent by mail for $2.

A pamphlet on CROUP, with

ADVICE AND PRESCRIPTIONS,
For 10 Cents.

From ALEXANDER WATERS, Washington County, Pa.:

"The Croup Tippet has been in use ever since I got it, and no croup since then." From HIRAM T. PARKER, Germantown, Pa.:

"Send me another Croup Tippet for a friend. The one I got some time ago proved a wonderful preventive.”

From A. L. ALBEE, Warwick, Mass.:

"My little boy had several very bad attacks of croup until I sent for the Croup He has worn it nearly four months. Tippet, and since using that he has not had one.

I should not feel safe without it, as I have lost one child with croup."

From T. K. JENKINS, Halifax, N. S.:

"Have had two Croup Tippets in use over four years and cannot speak too highly of their magical properties. At any rate, would never be without them in the house." The Pastor of an M. E. Church in Connecticul writes:

"A neighbor of mine has a boy who has been subject to croup very much, but since he has worn your Croup Tippet he has not had croup. As I have a boy much afflicted with it I will try it. Inclosed find price named."

Two out of three orders are of this kind-from parties who have heard of the success of the Croup Tippet among their neighbors.

FAMILY SYRINGES.

Dr. Foote's.-Rubber Bulb and Tubes and metal pipes (as in cut). By mail, $1.

The Arterial Action-Continuous Flow-all Rubber Family Syringe.-Patented June, 1885. The last is the best. No leak, no break in the flow, no loss of valves possible. Packed in Cloth Case. Price, $3.00, by mail.

THE LADIES' OWN SYRINGE.

Affords the most efficient means for thorough cleansing, and for ready application of medicinal washes without waste. One size only-made of rubber bulb and glass cylinder. By express only. Price, $2.50.

Address,

(Order Department.)

DR. E. B. FOOTE,

120 Lexington Avenue, New York.

APPENDIX.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS-PRESCRIPTIONS.

THIS part of "Plain Home Talk" appears for the first time in the edition of ten thousand copies, printed for the year 1889. Up to this time about half a million of these books had been sold (beginning with and including the earliest editions of "Medical Common Sense," back in 1857). During over thirty years, not a business day has come and gone without the receipt by author and publishers of letters expressing the highest gratification with the work, or containing thanks for some special bit of advice or information which a reader has found very useful and appropriate to his needs; but now and then is heard a complaint that the book is not as other popular medical works in the one matter, that it lacks special instructions for the management of all diseases, and prescriptions for medicinal treatment of them. To the careful reader of the book, it has doubtless been made evident that the author never intended to include in this work the broad domain of medical practice, which would require, at least, another volume of one thousand pages. There are already several carefully prepared, but necessarily large and expensive works, covering this field, while "Plain Home Talk" embraces many very important subjects which these family practice books do not touch upon. A knowledge of the causes and means of avoiding disease is not only more important, but more easy to make plain to the general reader, and the author still holds firmly the opinion that, in selecting subjects for the preceding chapters, he has chosen well for the greatest good of the greater number of his readers. To acquire even a moderate understanding of the other domain-the diagnosis and

treatment of disease-really necessitates much study, wide reading, special aptitude, and opportunity for varied experience; but there is no need of repeating here the line of argument presented in Chapter XIII. of Part II., and elsewhere, under the heading "Everybody His Own Doctor."

An old recipe for cooking a hare, begins, “first, catch the hare,” and so, to use wisely a prescription suggested for a disease, presupposes that the disease has been correctly recognized. For neither acute or chronic diseases is it possible to name universal specifics that are applicable in all cases; and many of the familiar names of disordered states of the body are, in fact, merely names of signs or symptoms, and not of primary diseases. So it becomes easier to suggest remedies or recipes for relief of ordinary symptoms of consumption (of which disease there are many varieties), than to write down dogmatically prescriptions for the disease itself, or the remedies for removing its causes. As to acute diseases, even when correctly recognized, the curative medicine for one person might be the worst possible for another, as in pneumonia; and all physicians agree that, however important be the recognition of the disease, the treatment is after all determined by the symptoms.

Even for well-known symptoms, it is not always easy to point out how to select the best remedy. Taking headache, for instance, it may be due to brain exhaustion, to stomach disorders, to liver or kidney incompetency, to sluggish bowels, or womb congestion; and the best mode of relief for any case is that which will in the best and quickest way remove the cause.

It is, therefore, easy to see that a prescription may do wonders or do nothing, according as it is or is not appropriately selected and employed. No physician can, then, be judged by his prescriptions, except when they are used by his direction and selection in cases under his care.

A few years ago a collection of useful notes and articles was made, from previous volumes of Dr. Foote's Health Monthly, to make a pamphlet of one hundred and twenty-eight pages, published under the title of "Dr. Foote's Handbook of Health Hints and Ready Recipes." It has served so useful a purpose, and helped so often to alleviate the common ailments of many a family (judging by the favorable reports of it), that we have been encouraged to think that the utility of "Plain Home Talk" can be in

APPENDIX.

creased by adding this chapter of selected prescriptions. Many have been chosen because they are in the best sense homely and handy, and care has been exercised in the selection to avoid such drugs or combinations as might not be safe in inexperienced hands. Yet even the dullest tools may hurt clumsy hands, and those who make use of any of the following formulæ are urged to exercise care to avoid mistakes in copying or compounding, and to make themselves familiar with measures and doses. Both solids and fluids are prescribed in drachms and ounces, but there are two parallel tables of weight and measure, thus:

An ordinary teaspoon once measured approximately one fluid drachm, but now teaspoons are made larger than formerly, so that one teaspoonful may measure two drachms. A tablespoonful equals about four drachms, or half an ounce, while a teacup holds about four (fluid) ounces or one gill.

1. Abortion, when threatened, may | ANGINA PECTORIS: PAINFUL CRAMPS be warded off by entire rest in bed, IN THE CHEST. ALSO FOR FACIAL and the administration of one to five NEURALGIA. drops of the fluid extract of conium, once in two hours; or fluid extract of viburnum prunifolium in doses of one drachm once in two hours.

ACNE: FACE PIMPLES.

2. B. Tinc. green soap.... 3 ounces. Carbolic acid..

R. Ammonium valerian

ate

5 grains.