Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.Giles, George Michael James
Science
Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.
Giles, George Michael James
Hygiene -- Popular works; Medical climatology; Tropical medicine
In the first place, it should be remembered that the danger of handling
and nursing patients is but small, for, as already remarked, you cannot
“catch” cholera in the same way as you can small-pox or plague. To
become infected by the germs you must eat or drink them. The discharges
in cholera are, of course, intensely poisonous, and it is impossible to
nurse a case without the hands, and perhaps one’s clothing, becoming
fouled; but the germs are perfectly harmless applied to the skin, and
with due precautions as to cleanliness and disinfection of the hands,
there should be no danger of their gaining access to the nurse’s mouth.
To avoid contamination of clothing, a washable overall should be worn,
such as can be improvised from a sheet, with a hole for the head cut in
the middle, secured round the waist with a cord, and the sleeves should
be turned up well above the elbows. Care should be taken not to touch
the lips or face with the hands while in attendance on the patient. On
leaving him, the overall should be wrung out in sublimate lotion and
spread out in the full blaze of the sun to dry, and the hands and arms
should be thoroughly washed first with warm soap and water and then with
sublimate lotion, care being taken not to eat or drink until these
precautions have been complied with.
Medical science is absolutely at fault in the treatment of cholera, so
that no treatment can be recommended beyond such measures as naturally
suggest themselves to relieve the patient’s sufferings.
The symptoms of the disease consist of violent purging and vomiting, the
discharged matter being watery and almost colourless, with small
particles and shreds of whitish matter floating in it, being, in fact,
to quote the usual simile, very like rice water. Very often the patient
suffers from violent muscular cramps, which cause great suffering. This
active onset is followed by a stage of collapse, in which the skin
becomes cold and livid and the face and hands singularly pinched and
blue. If the patient survive this stage, it will be found that the urine
is suppressed, the functions of the kidneys being, for the time,
absolutely suspended; and the patient can never be considered out of
danger till this function has resumed its natural course.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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