Doctor Garthshore’s Treatment of Scrophulus Swellings

MARGIN:
Extract of a Letter
to the Honble
And[rew] Strange Esq.
Chief Justice of
Nova Scotia - respect-
ing a disease knee
of a Girl aged 
    Years. The daughter
of M^rs. Bailey his
house keeper.

__

Nothing is so difficult as to give any advice about a disease at such
a distance of time after the account was given, and when it
will be so long before the remedy mentioned can be made use of.
    The child is most probably scrophulus, the knee
is merely a symptom of the state of the constitution, and 
the chirugical treatment must depend upon the judge-
ment of an experienced surgeon according to the state of that
the swelling is in._ Fomenting with warm sea
water, and applying poultices of warm seawater

           Doctor Garthshore’s treatment of Scrop-
           -hulus swellings

and bread or Rye meal and lard useful are in almost all
scrophulous swellings. ~ Blisters round the knee are 
sometimes useful, and a plaster made of Gum Ammoniac
softened with vinegar of Squilles. But the grand matter is 
rectify the child’s constitution, and that will be best done
by constant sea bathing and by taking at least once or twice
a week so much of the sea water inwardly as to purge
gently. at the same time the child may take inwardly
decoctions of Bark, and the root of Mezerion: the former especially
if the child be weak, pale & relaxed. If she has any scroph-
-ulous glands about her neck, armpits or elsewhere, she
ought to take powders of the burnt spunge, or vegetables
ethiops, with a small proportion of Sal: polychrest. all
these things must be regulated by the judgement of the
medical Gentlemen on the spot. These are the most
effectual remedies to which may be added sea [weede]
applied to the knee or rather that kind of slime which
is found in the pods, may be often rubbed on the swelling

MARGIN:

1793
London S^t. Martin,
{...} 6 March