Occasional Physic for dogs
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Home Life

Recipes from the Lewis Lloyd Collection: Physic for Dogs

The recipes in the Lewis Lloyd collection even included some medicine for man's best friend:

"Occasional Physic for dogs

1 oz Jalap
1 pint of syrup of buckthorn

Dose for a full sized dog.
A large tablespoon twice a week, in hot weather more especially.

For distemper
outward application

½ oz White Hellebore
½ oz Black Brimstone
1 Pint of old milk (1 quart for a very small dog), mix together and sponge the dog well all over (particularly the chest and underneath parts). Shut the dog up in a warm place, it makes him very sick and purged for some hours - when recovered sufficiently feed for the first 24 hours on slops and no meat, afterwards keep him well. Tho' the hellebore is poison, dog need not be muzzled. The above is a capital dressing for Sporting dogs once a month during the summer and hot weather."

As for the other home remedies on the site, we cannot recommend you try these at home!

Jalap "consists of the dried tubercules of Ipomoea Purga, Hayne (N.O. Convolvulaceae), a climbing plant indigenous to the eastern slopes of the Mexican Andes." (The British Pharmaceutical Codex, 1911). It was used (in humans) as a purgative, as was Buckthorn syrup (The Physiomedical Dispensatory, William Cook, MD, 1869).

White hellebore ". . . is an irritant. When applied . . . [as an] ointment . . . it excites a singular sense of heat and tingling, or prickling pain, which, however, does not last long, but is followed by a coolness and more or less numbness" and "sometimes it gives rise to headache, nausea, griping, slight diarrhoea, and depression of the action of the heart. When swallowed it is a violent, irritant poison . . ." (King's American Dispensatory, 1898). Brimstone, a preparation of sulphur, was used to reduce itching (The Physiomedical Dispensatory, William Cook, MD, 1869).

Again many thanks to Henriette's Herbal Homepage.