EXTRAORDINARY CURATIVE AGENTS. The Virtues of Brandy and Tobacco.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 68, 20 September 1884, Page 5

EXTRAORDINARY CURATIVE AGENTS. The Virtues of Brandy and Tobacco.

M. Albert Delpit tells us in the " Paris '» that Theodore Barri6re, the rather eccentric author of " TGte de Linotte," the oi'iginal of Mr Albery's "Featherbrain," had an attack, or thought he had an attack, of cholera when that disease visited Paris in 1554. He had made up his mind that a free use of stimulants was the proper mode of combating the disease. One morning in the height of the epidemic he was suddenly taken ill as he was going out for his accustomed ride. He felt cold all over, and shivered from head to foot. Any one but himself would have gone to bed and sent for the doctor ; but Barridre, who had implicit confidence in his own system of therapeutics, went into the nearest cafe, ordered a carafon of brandy, and drank it it off. Thus invigorated, he managed to get into the saddle, and galloped along the boulevards. At the corner of the Rue Richelieu he stopped at another caf6 swallowed a second carafon of cognac, and resumed his ride. He dismounted again when he got to the Rue Royale, and repeated the dose. He then started at a gallop for the Bois de Boulogne, and continued the treatment by ordering a fourth carafon at one of the restaurants there. He rode home by the Ru de Rivoli, dropped off his horse half-asleep, half -awake, and made his way to> bed, and slept for thirty hours without stirring. When he awoke Lambert-Thiboust was standing by his bedside " I came to see if I could be of any service," said his friend ; "I heard you were ill." "So I have been." "What was the matter with you ?" "The cholera." "And what did you do for it?" "I got blind drunk. Some interesting observations on "the tobacco remedy," by General Chingman, of , North Carolina, recently published, are

attracting much attention at present among medical authorities on the other side of the Atlantic. The General announces his belief that the use of wet tobacco as a poultice will be instrumental in saving many thousands of lives annually in the United States. He has himself suffered much, and owes the health he now enjoys solely to tobacco. In August, 1864, he was shot through the leg below the knee. The muscles and nerves were cut through, and he was in a most critical condition. Inflaimnation set in, and he suffered intense agony. At his own request, wet tobacco leaves were applied to the wound, when to the surprise of the surgeons the pain quickly subsided, and a complete cure was ultimately effected. Shortly afterwards the General was almost blinded by a frightful blow on the right eye aimed by a driver with the butt-end of a whip at the head of a horse. The eye was also cured by tobacco. A lawyer and two young ladies in North Carolina were curad of severe inflammation of the eyes entirely by the tobacco remedy ; and among other cases mentioned is that of a United States senator, who was cured by wet tobacco of " intolerable pain in the side and back."