Poultices in Suggestive Therapeutics.--Poultices represent another phase of the value of suggestion in medicine and surgery, though for many centuries those who used them were sure that the reasons for their employment were entirely physical and not psychic. All sorts of poultices have been used and each was supposed to do specific curative work. New forms of poultice material have been introduced, and physicians and patients have been certain that each worked wonders of its own. The drawing power of the poultice was extolled until patients dwelt on the idea that this external application was literally engaged in extracting from them, even from distant portions of their anatomy, virulent material that would do harm if allowed to remain in them. Poultices in suitable cases, because they represent moist heat, do good by counter irritation, by bringing about the expulsion of gas, by diverting internal hyperemia to external tissues, but most of their supposed efficacy has been really due to the bother required to prepare and apply them, the discomfort of having them on, and the feeling that now something had been done and the aches and pains must get better. They are still used, but to a much less degree than before. Now the ordinary teaching is that a hot water bag wrapped in dry flannel, if dry heat is the agent desired, and in moist flannel, if moist heat is the desideratum, is much more efficient. It takes but a few minutes for a poultice, no matter how hot when applied--and occasionally in the olden time they were applied so warm as to burn or scald--to decrease in temperature to that of the body. After that they represent only a moist compress. It is easy to understand that the suggestive influence of poultices might serve for an age that knew less about the realities of the efficacy of external applications than ours. As a matter of fact, we have, nevertheless, shown ourselves to be quite as credulous and ready to receive analogous remedies as the past generation. With the waning of the popularity of the poultice, not {34} only among the profession, but also among the people generally, there came into use various plasters which were supposed to have even more wonderful efficacy than the poultice of the olden time. These required a good deal of trouble to apply and once applied remained on for hours, and so continued to produce a definite curative effect on patients' minds. When first introduced, exaggerated claims were made for their therapeutic value and a regular crusade to diffuse correct information regarding them had to be made, in order to set them in their proper place as mere wet compresses, without any therapeutic efficiency beyond that of cloths wrung out in water and kept in touch with the skin.