Treatment for fever (12): Lokendra rasa

One fourth tola of mercury is to be purified by rubbing it with powdered brick, juice of leaves of karma-ranga (averrhoa earambola), ginger-juice, juice of black dhutura leaves, juice of leaves of briddha-daraka (argyreia speciosa), and kanya. An equal quantity of sulphur is also to be purified by being, first of all, washed with the water with which rice has been washed, then melted in an iron pot and immersed in the juice or decoction of chitraka plant^[1]. Prepare a black sulphuret of mercury by rubbing these two together, and then mix with it one sixteenth tola in weight of each of iron and svarna-makshika, rub them all together (with lime juice) and make them into a paste. Smear with this paste a copper leaf, so thin as can easily be pierced through by a thorn, and subject it to heat by a labaka-puta (see vol. I, page 298) for 45 minutes only. When cooled, the medicine is to be rubbed, by means of a copper rod, for one day each with four tolas of the juice of the leaves of each of the following kesha-raja, grishma-sundara, bhringa-raja, manduka-parni, nirgundi, jyotismati, paribhadra, red chitraka, bhanga, kaka-machi, nila (indigo), and hasti-shundi. Thus rubbing the medicine for 12 days, mix with it one fourth tola of powdered trikatu (i.e, shunthi, pippali, and maricha, combined), to be made into pills of the size of a mustard seed. These pills are to be dried up in a shady place, not exposed to the sun's rays.

Two of such pills should be given to a patient suffering from fever due to an abnormal excess of the three dosas, specially when he is in a state of delirium or unconciousness. The body of the patient should be covered by means of a thick piece of cloth, so long as the patient does not feel better by purgation. He should then be allowed to take food with curd and to drink a sufficient quantity of water. A little later, medicated oil, having the property of pacifying vayu (such as narayana-taila) should be rubbed all over the body. The following are the accompaniments of the medicine:—decoction of panchamuli in chronic fever, decoction of ativisa in chronic diarrhoea and dysentery, juice of parpata in fever attended with shivering, and water in which jira has been kept immersed for about three hours in fever attended with diarrhoea. This medicine may also be used in indigestion, jaundice, asthma, and cough.