First aid in illness and injury; Medicine, Popular
Hiccough is a distressing and sometimes a dangerous complaint. Many
times a swallow of water will stop it. If simple measures fail, the
following has been found very efficacious. The nerves that produce
hiccough are near the surface in the neck. They may be reached and
compressed by placing two fingers right in the center of the top of the
breastbone between the two cords that run up either side of the neck
and pressing inward, downward, and outward. A few minutes' pressure of
this kind will stop the most obstinate hiccough.
Certain injuries are attended with what is known as shock. Usually
the degree of shock is proportionate to the extent of the injury,
though not always so. Often seemingly trivial injuries produce a fatal
shock. The symptoms are cold, clammy skin, face very pale and pinched,
eyes widely dilated and staring, pulse rapid and irregular, little or
no pain, even from severe injuries. The patient retains his mental
faculties but loses the power to originate, answering when spoken to
but usually volunteering no statements of his own.
The treatment consists in lowering the head and elevating the
extremities. Wrap the patient in hot blankets and place hot water
bottles about him, give brandy, or what is as good, hot water; inject
1/30 gr. strychnia every fifteen minutes for three doses.
The symptoms from loss of blood are very much the same as from shock
and luckily respond to the same treatment. In addition, if there
chances to be a fountain syringe in the camp, give rectal enemas of hot
normal salt solution, which can be made by dissolving a teaspoonful
of common salt in a quart of sterile water. In some way this solution
seems to take the place of the blood lost. A hot application over the
heart is also valuable, as are mustard drafts to the spine.
MEDICAL TREATMENT OF CAMP
DISEASES
CHAPTER III
MEDICAL TREATMENT OF CAMP DISEASES
In this day of compact pharmaceuticals one can carry a complete
equipment of medicines in a vest pocket almost. The old day of
ponderous powders and nauseating liquids has passed. The physician now
who prescribes for his patients immense bottles of "shotgun" mixtures
writes himself down a back number. This manner of administering drugs
can be taken advantage of by the man who wishes to carry with him upon
his outing a supply of remedies for the relief of such ailments as may
befall him.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said in delivering an address to the
graduating medical class of Harvard, "Young men, you have been taught
here at least twenty remedies for every disease; after you have
practiced medicine twenty years you will have one remedy for twenty
diseases."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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