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Show "the cold key. A Popular and an Ancient Remedy for Nosebleed. (New York Medical Journal.) In case of hemorrhage, especially! in those bleeding from the nose, our forefathers fore-fathers applied to the forehead and tn the nose ointments, and even the patients' pa-tients' own blood. They practiced ligation li-gation of the limbs, a means devised by Apollonius in the reign of Nero, h-gating h-gating the great toe of the side corresponding corre-sponding to the bleeding nostril, and they resorted to derivation of bloodletting. blood-letting. They plugged the ears with tow, a procedure recommended by Galen. Ga-len. But above all, they sought to produce pro-duce fainting. Locally, the haemastat-ic haemastat-ic most employed filled the nasetaoin ic mist employed was spider's web, with whtcn tney nuea ins uiwi i.-. Of all these empirical procedures, the most widespread and the one stil Imost employed in popular medicine is the application of cold. The most available avail-able source of cold, because It is everywhere every-where procurable, is water; consequently conse-quently it has oftenest been employed. In epistaxis the ancient physicians advised ad-vised bathing the face with very cold water and causing it to be held in the mouth; they also soaked the hands and feet in cold water. On the theory that cold things restrain re-strain hemorrhage, many persons replaced re-placed water by solid cold objects and hung about the neck of the patients attacked with epistaxis coral, jasper, yellow amber, marble or articles of iron. Physicians pointed out, indeed, certain regions with which it was preferable pref-erable to make the contact. They realized re-alized that it was the coldness of the object, not its nature, that did the work. No special property must be attributed at-tributed to the iron, said Guyon-Dolois, for chains of gold, silver or lead would serve the same purpose. In popular medicine, however, iron has remained the material most employed in nasal hemorrhages, and the application of the key to the back is largely resorted to in the household. Dr. Helot possesses an enormous key which he uses as a paperweight. One day a patient, pointing point-ing to this massive key, exclaimed, "It is to stop hemorrhages." It was a key of the eighteenth century. We may laugh, says M. Helot, at the charm attributed to the key in epistaxis, epis-taxis, but we must admit that cold has a certain action in cases of hemorrhage. hem-orrhage. It contracts the capiliary vessels. When it is applied at a distance dis-tance from the site of the hemorrhage its efficiency may be a matter for discussion, dis-cussion, but its effect Is certain when It is applied to the actual seat of the j bleeding, and rhinologists know the value of causing the patient to swallow swal-low ice. Possibly the cold key has no other hemastatic power than what is , connected with the sensation of cold I which it produces; a cold compress would probably act with more certainty, certain-ty, but it would be difficult to dethrone the key, which one always has in one's pocket. There is certainly some wisdom wis-dom in the resources of our ancestors and of the common people, even as the alchemists of old were no fools, as is shown by our modem chemistry. |