Intestinal worms

"Oftentimes children are extremely troubled with worms; they are generated of a visous and phlegmy humor; are sometimes round, and then children are commonly troubled with a feaver, and grow lean, their appetite fails them, they start in their sleep, they have a dry cough joyned with it, with stinking breath, and an ill colour in their faces; the eyes hollow and dark with a kind of irregular feaver, which comes three or four times at night, and they often rub their noses; if they be little worms, they have always a desire to go to stool, and their excrements are very purous."  (Waller, 98-99.)

 

Buchan identified 3 kinds of worms: "the tape-worm; the round and long worm; and the round and short worm[s, which] commonly lodge in the rectum and occasion a disagreeable itching about the seat [pinworms].  Treatment: Though numberless medicines are extolled for expelling and killing worms, yet no disease more frequently baffles the physician's skill."  Really?  What about smallpox and plague?  Dr. Buchan recommends strong purges to get rid of them and "stomachic bitters" to prevent the worms' breeding.  "An ounce of sallad oil and a table-spoonful of common salt may be taken in a glass of red port wine thrice a-day, or oftener, if the stomach will bear it.  When a looseness proceeds from worms, which may be known from the sliminess of the stools, mixed with pieces of decayed worms, ... medicines must be given to kill and carry off these vermin, as the powder of tin with purges of rhubarb and calomel.  I have frequently known those big bellies, which in children are commonly reckoned a sign of worms, quite removed by giving them white soap [yes, he said soap] in their ... food.  Tansy, garlic, and rue, are all good against worms[.]  (King/Buchan, 152-53.)

Etching of Buchan in 1802 (upper right). 18th century recipe book with recipe for "Worms to remove." (lower left)  (Source: Wellcome Library.)

Photograph of tansy with John, a fellow pilgrim on the Wesley Pilgrimage, from the Primitive Physic Garden at the Old Rectory, Epworth, England.  9 October 2012.

Wesley regarding "Worms*
*A child may be known to have the worms, by chilliness, paleness, hollow eyes, itching of the nose, starting in sleep, and an unusual stinking breath. --- Worms are never found in children that live wholly on milk.
807.  Take two tea-spoonfuls of brandy sweetened with loaf-sugar every morning:
808.  Or, a spoonful of juice of lemons: or, two spoonfuls of nettle-juice:
809.  Or, boil four ounces of quicksilver an hour in a quart of clear water.  Pour it off and bottle it up.  You may use the same quicksilver again and again.  Use this for common drink: or at least night and morning, for a week or two.  Then purge off the dead worm, with fifteen or twenty grains of jalap:
810.  Or, take two tea-spoonfuls of worm seed, mixed with treacle, for six mornings:
811.  Or, one, two, or three drachms of powdered fern-root, boiled in mead.  This kills both the flat and round worms.  Repeat the medicine from time to time.
812.  Or, give one tea-spoonful of syrup of bear's foot ..."

Well, I will put you out of your misery there.  Wesley offers an additional three longer recipes and concludes, "To prevent.  Avoid drinking stagnated water."  (Wesley, Physic, 115-16.)

Gross, aye?