In the cure of a gleet proceeding from relaxation, the principal design is to brace and restore a proper degree of tension to the debilitated and relaxed vessels. For this purpose, besides the medicines recommended in the gonorrhœa, the patient may have recourse to stronger and more powerful astringents, as the Peruvian bark,[3] alum, vitriol, galls, tormentil, bistort, ballustines, tincture of gum kino, &c. The injections may be rendered more astringent by the addition of a few grains of alum, or increasing the quantity of vitriol as far as the parts are able to bear it. Footnote 3: The Peruvian bark may be combined with other astringents, and prepared in the following manner:—Take of Peruvian bark bruised six drams, of fresh galls bruised two drams, boil them in a pound and a half of water to a pound; to the strained liquor add three ounces of the simple tincture of the bark. A small tea-cupful of this may be taken three times a day, adding to each cup fifteen or twenty drops of the acid elixir of vitriol. The last remedy which we shall mention, in this case, is the cold bath, than which there is not a more powerful bracer in the whole compass of medicine. It ought never to be omitted in this species of gleet, unless there be something in the constitution of the patient which renders the use of it unsafe. The chief objections to the use of the cold bath are a full habit, and an unsound state of the viscera. The danger of the former may always be lessened, if not removed, by purging and bleeding; but the latter is an insurmountable obstacle, as the pressure of the water, and the sudden contraction of the external vessels, by throwing the blood with too much force upon the internal parts are apt to occasion ruptures of the vessels, or a flux of humours upon the diseased organs. But where no objections of this kind prevail, the patient ought to plunge over head in water every morning fasting, for three or four weeks together. He should not, however, stay long in the water, and should take care to have his skin dried as soon as he comes out. The regimen proper in this case is the same as was mentioned in the last stage of the gonorrhœa: the diet must be drying and astringent, and the drink Spa, Pyrmont, or Bristol waters with which a little claret or red wine may sometimes be mixed. When the gleet does not in the smallest degree yield to these medicines, there is reason to suspect that it proceeds from ulcers. In this case recourse must be had to mercury, and such medicines as tend to correct any predominant acrimony with which the juices may be affected, as the decoction of China, sarsaparilla, sassafras, or the like.