own as "Carron Oil" forms
the best dressing to apply. If a burn has, however, gone so far as to
become, owing to neglect, a festering sore, then warm water treatment
is required, as recommended for ABSCESS (_see_). _See also_ Wounds.

Buttermilk.--Where we prescribe this, either for drinking or for
external use in poultices or bathing, it is very important it should be
pure and fresh. If kept too long, it causes often terrible pain when
applied to eruptive sores. There must be no "watering" or doctoring
with cream of tartar, if good results are desired. If the milk be too
long kept, and cannot be had fresh, it may be mixed with a little sweet
milk and all churned well together. Then it may be used. If still
painful, mix again with more sweet milk. To soak diseased skin in good
fresh buttermilk is so powerful a means of cure, that to procure it a
good deal of trouble is well spent. It is also invaluable as a daily
drink for regulating the bowels, and maintaining health. Sterilise all
sweet milk used.

If buttermilk cannot be had, acetic acid or vinegar, or the juice of
lemons, may be mixed with sweet milk or even water, until the mixture
attains about the usual sourness of buttermilk. This makes an efficient
substitute.

Buttermilk Poultice.--Boiled potatoes beaten up with fresh buttermilk
make an excellent poultice for all eruptive sores, scabbed heads, and
heated skin affections. After these always apply soap lather (_see_
Lather). If buttermilk cannot be had, use acetic acid or vinegar, as
above.

Cancer.--Swellings in the breast often arouse fear of cancer, but are
generally very simple affairs and easily yield to treatment as in
article Breast, Swelling in. If not, we should chill the diseased
growth so as to arrest it. Now this, as we have proved, may be
effectually done, and the sorely tried patient may be saved a world of
pain, and perhaps cured. We have seen more than one apparently
desperate case, even where the breast had been cut off and the evil was
again showing itself, in which effective cooling arrested the growth
and saved the sufferer. When a growth of this kind has gone a certain
length, there is severe pain. The cooling removes this, and secures the
patient unspeakably precious rest without narcotics. But this is not
all: it puts an effectual stop to the swelling. If the case has not
gone very far, the swelling falls, and may disappear; but even when it
has gone too far for this, the diseas