(From amburo, to burn). Burns, or scalds; called also causis, ambustio, ambustura. Dr. Cullen places this case as a variety of the phlogosis erythema.

A burn is from solid substances; a scald from any hot fluid, or solid when in a fluid state. Their danger is according to the degree, the part injured, the peculiarity of the constitution, and consequent symptoms. Wounds from burns are more liable to form a cicatrix than from other causes.

Burns differ in degree only. The slighter kinds resemble inflammation; those where much substance is destroyed, mortification.

In the slighter kinds, medicines that neither heat nor cool in a great degree are to be preferred. Cold water may be used, by means of linen rags dipped into it, and the application repeated as often as they become either dry or warm. In the same manner brandy and rectified spirit of wine may be applied, repeating the dressings until the pain abates, and then the camphorated spirit of wine is to be preferred.

Vinous and wolatile spirits, if applied before the blisters rise, generally prevent them, and always moderate the inflammation; but if the injury is on a membranous or tendinous part, it is best to mix oil with the spirit, otherwise it will too much contract it.

To the same purpose as the above, and in want of them, any of the following may be used: - The white of eggs beat thin; vinegar, in a quart of which one handful of common salt is dissolved; the pickle from olives; the brine from cabbage; oil of turpentine; am cooling oil or liniment; vinegar; lintseed or olive oil: apples or potatoes scraped, and applied as a cataplasm. If the blisters are considerable they may be punctured and dressed with any cooling ointment; and if digestion is necessary, a proportion of ung. resinae flavae be added. Should fever follow, the appropriate remedies must be employed.

In the severer kinds, if a crust is formed, the cure is effected by emollients and suppurants, as in the case of gun-shot wounds. See Sclopetoplaga.

If the accident hath happened in the face, or, in females, in the neck, whatever can tend to increase the cicatrix must be avoided: emollients folded in linen cloths are the best applications; an emollient fomentation, with about two ounces of the camphorated spirit to a pint, may be used at the renewal of the other dressings, during the first three or four days, or until the crust is separated; after which the procedure will be as in any common wound.

If the crust remain firm above three days, make incisions through it, to discharge the matter underneath. To prevent a cicatrix, as the skin forms, let it be often exposed to the stream of hot water, and apply a cerate of wax and the oil of eggs.

Where all is destroyed even to the bone, Heister says, that the only method is amputation; but the methods here recommended will often succeed, and save the limb.

A violent head-ach in one, and pain in the limbs of another person, were removed by the parts affected being accidentally burnt, and that only slightly. Hom-berg thinks that burning with moxa, and with cauteries, cure by quickening the motion of the humours, by thinning them, and by destroying the ends of the vessels, by which the fluids flow less that way. On the whole burns can only be judiciously treated by considering them as high inflammations, of the erythematous kind, and the treatment must accord, by evacuants if necessary, and by bark; attending in each to the material benefit arising from removing pain by proper opiates, without which but little advantage will be gained, whatever other means are used. For burns, or scalds, the following preparations are esteemed as highly useful.