For a child of four or five years old, six grains of rhubarb, five of jalap, and two of calomel, may be mixed in a spoonful of syrup or honey, and given in the morning. The child should keep the house all day, and take nothing cold. This dose may be repeated twice a-week for three or four weeks. On the intermediate days the child may take a scruple of powdered tin and ten grains of æthiops mineral in a spoonful of treacle twice a-day. This dose must be increased or diminished according to the age of the patient. Bisset says, the great bastard black hellebore, or _bear’s foot_, is a most powerful vermifuge for the long round worms. He orders the decoction of about a drachm of the green leaves, or about fifteen grains of the dried leaves in powder for a dose to a child between four and seven years of age. This dose is to be repeated two or three times. He adds, that the green leaves made into a syrup with coarse sugar, is almost the only medicine he has used for round worms for three years past. Before pressing out the juice, he moistens the bruised leaves with vinegar, which corrects the medicine. The dose is a tea-spoonful at bed-time, and one or two next morning. I have frequently known those big bellies, which in children are commonly reckoned a sign of worms, quite removed by giving them white soap in their pottage, or other food. Tansy, garlic, and rue, are all good against worms, and may be used various ways. We might here mention many other plants, both for external and internal use, as the cabbage-bark, &c. but think the powder of tin with æthiops mineral, and the purges of rhubarb and calomel, are more to be depended on. Ball’s purging vermifuge powder is a very powerful medicine. It is made of equal parts of rhubarb, seammony, and calomel, with as much double refined sugar as is equal to the weight of all the other ingredients. These must be well mixed together, and reduced to a fine powder. The dose for a child is from ten grains to twenty, once or twice a-week. An adult may take a drachm for a dose[136]. Parents who would preserve their children from worms ought to allow them plenty of exercise in the open air; to take care that their food be wholesome and sufficiently solid; and, as far as possible, to prevent their eating raw herbs, roots, or green trashy fruits. It will not be amiss to allow a child who is subject to worms, a glass of red wine after meals; as every thing that braces and strengthens the stomach is good both for preventing and expelling these vermin[137]. CHAP. XXXVI. OF THE JAUNDICE. This disease is first observable in the white of the eye, which appears yellow. Afterwards the whole skin puts on a yellow appearance. The urine too is of a saffron hue, and dies a white cloth of the same colour. There is likewise a species of this disease called the Black Jaundice.