If Someone Swallows Poison, Make Them Throw Up

Making someone vomit can do more damage and is no longer recommended. Some swallowed poisons, especially corrosive ones like drain cleaner, bleach, or petrol, burn on the way down and would burn all over again on the way back up, and vomiting also raises the risk of choking or breathing the substance into the lungs. Syrup of ipecac, the old standby for inducing vomiting, has been withdrawn from this use precisely because the evidence showed it did not help and could harm. The modern advice is simple and the opposite of the instinct: do not try to make the person sick, and instead immediately call your poisons information line or emergency services, who will tell you exactly what to do for that specific substance, which is often as undramatic as a drink of water or simply monitoring. So the heroic finger-down-the-throat move can turn one injury into two. The right first step is the phone, not the bucket.