THE USE OF GRIST MILLS IN THE TREATMENT OF WHOOPING COUGH ACCORDING TO DR. ROBERT JAMES (1705-1776)

Abstract

Folk medicine, both in the United States and Great Britain, contains many references to the use of grist mills in the treatment of whooping cough.¹ Most writers advised taking a child with whooping cough into a grist mill and holding it over the hopper so that he might inhale the dust from the mill. An even more curious and inhuman use of a grist mill is described by Dr. Robert James in his three-volume medical dictionary of 1743-1745:

Another empirical method of curing the Chincough when Medicines prove ineffectual is to fright the Child by putting it in the Hopper of a Mill, which makes a terrible Noise, and the Aspect of whose Wheels is dreadful; and by this Method a Chin-cough is sometimes suddenly cured; the Reason son of which undoubtedly confits (sic) in this, not only that the animal Spirits, being, by the Fright, forced into new Distractions, leave their former inordinate Motions, but also, that the matter producing the spasms is, by such Perturbation, either dissipated, or forced into other Nerves, where it proves less troublesome.²