In hot weather when bilious diseases prevail, use _Mercurius_ 3d, _Podophyllin_ 2d, and _Leptandrin_ 1st in rotation, giving one dose a day.
In the winter, or when _Typhoid fevers_ prevail, use _Mercurius_ and _Rhus_ tox. alternately a dose every day.
A dose of _Sulphur_, or rubbing a little flour of sulphur on the hands, will generally suffice.
Keep the _arms_, _hands_ and _chest_ well clothed and warm. _Affecting_ the _head_ as _catarrh_, or the pelvic regions keep the _feet and ankles warm and dry_. Affecting joints and muscles as Rheumatism--protect the _Spine_ (back) from colds and currents of air.
After an accidental exposure as by getting the feet wet, or being caught in a shower, drink _bountifully_ of cold water, and take a dose of _Nux_; followed in an hour by _Aconite_, if any chilliness is felt, or _Copaiva_ if the head is "stuffed up."
In winter and spring when the weather is mild, but there is snow, or the ground is damp, more clothes are necessary than when it is freezing hard and the air is dry.
As it often becomes necessary for the practitioner to make more or less of his own dilutions and attenuations, some brief instructions especially to new beginners, may not come amiss.
Medicine is prepared by mixing it with distilled water, or purified 98 per cent. Alcohol; or if solid and dry, by reducing it to powder and triturating (rubbing) it in a mortar with pure sugar or Sugar of Milk. The liquid is called _dilution_, the powder _trituration_. The attenuations are mostly made at the decimal (1-10,) or centecimal (1-100) ratio and numbered 1, 2, 3, &c., by putting ten drops of the liquid with ninety drops of Alcohol, or ten grains of the powder with ninety grains of Sugar for the 1st, and ten grains or drops of the 1st with ninety more of Alcohol or Sugar, as the case may be, for the 2nd, and so on to any desirable extent.
If the centecimal attenuation is adopted, one grain or drop is used instead of ten, as in the decimal.
I prefer the decimal to the centecimal ratio. Not that there can possibly be any difference in the action of the medicines, at the same attenuation, whether it was brought to that state through a series of 1-10, or 1-100; the 3d at the 1-100 ratio of dilution being _precisely the same_ as the 6th at 1-10. My preference for the decimal ratio is based upon the greater convenience and accuracy of measuring larger quantities.