Choking remedy

If it will go neither up nor down, put two grains of tartar emetic in the choking person's mouth.

From: Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts
Published: 1867
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1867

Persons are frequently in danger of suffocation from fish-bones, pins, etc., which stick in the throat. The moment an accident of this kind occurs, desire the patient to be perfectly still, open his mouth, and look into it. If you can see the obstruction, endeavor to seize it with your finger and thumb, or a long slender pair of pincers. If it cannot be got up, or is not of a nature to do any injury in the stomach, push it down with the handle of a spoon, or a flexible round piece of whalebone, the end of which is neatly covered with a roll of linen, or anything that may be at hand.

If you can get it neither up nor down, place two grains of tartar emetic in the patient's mouth.

As it dissolves, it will make him excessively sick, and in consequence of the relaxation, the bone, or whatever it may be, may descend into the stomach or be ejected from the mouth.

Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts, 1867. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Tartar emetic is an antimony salt and a violent emetic. Giving it to someone with an obstructed airway means inducing vomiting in a person who cannot protect that airway, which is how you turn a blockage into aspiration.

The reasoning is at least visible: relaxation and retching might dislodge the bone. It is a real mechanism, applied in the worst possible way.

Notes from the 21st century

Back blows and abdominal thrusts. The current answer, and they work. For a fully blocked airway, call emergency services while someone starts.
Antimony accumulates. It was a mainstay of period medicine as an emetic and it poisons cumulatively, which was not understood.
The page's other advice is bleeding and catheters. This entry sits in a general first-aid chapter that also instructs the householder in venesection.

Also in this book

Bonbons cast in leaden moulds — Boiling sugar syrup, poured into moulds made of lead, and handed to children.
Common Ratafia — Ten pounds of bitter almonds infused in ten gallons of spirit, perfumed with ambergris.
Jamaica Rum (factitious) — Four gallons of neutral spirit, one of real rum, and half an ounce of sulphuric acid.

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