RIIBEFA'CIENTS are external agents employed in medicine for the purpose of stimu lating and consequently reddenbig the part to which they are applied. All agents which, after a certain period, act as blisters, may be made to act as rubefacients, if their time of action is shortened. The mildest rubefacients are hot poultices, cloths soaked in very hot water, moderately stimulating liniments—as, for example, soap-liniment, with various proportions of liniment cf ammonia, or chloroform, etc. Spanish fly, in the form of emplu,.struni eatifireiens, or warns plaster, in which the active ingredient is blunted by the free admixture of soap-plaster, resin-plaster, etc. is a good form of this class of agents. Capsicum or Cayenne pepper, in the form etc., a poultice, is an excellent rubefacient; it is much used in the West Indies, but is seldom employed in this country. Mustard, in the form of eataplasma $inapi*, or mustard poultice, and oil of turpentine, are perhaps the best of the ordinary rubefacients.
The former is applied to the soles of the feet and the calves of the legs in the low stage of typhus fever, in apoplexy and coma, in narcotic poisoning, etc. It is also applied to the chest, with much advantage, in many cases of pulmonary and car diac disease, and to the surface of the abdomen in various affections of the abdominal viscera. The best method of employing turpe:-.tine is to sprinkle it freely on three or four folds of clean flannel, wrung out of boiling water. 'I he sprinkled surface of this pad is placed upon the skin, and 'a warm dry towel is laid over the flannel. Two or three such applications will produce a powerful rubefacient effect. Turpentine thus applied is serviceable in all the cases mentioned in the remarks on mustard, as well as in sore throat, chronic rheumatism, neuralgia, etc.