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
Now as to treatment. It must be in the first place remembered that it is
absolutely useless to worry the patient with attempts to administer
medicines by the mouth, as the digestive and absorptive functions are
for the time totally stopped, and it is quite as much to the purpose to
put your remedies in the patient’s pocket as to force him to swallow
them. To have any chance of acting, medicines must be administered by
being injected beneath the skin by means of the hypodermic needle; and
so powerless are all known drugs in this disease, that I should hesitate
to recommend such medications to be attempted by amateur physicians. The
only drug which has ever appeared to me to effect any good has been
chloral hydrate dissolved in water and injected under the skin in
5-grain doses every few minutes until 30 or even 40 grains have been
administered. There can be no doubt that this treatment controls the
violence of the symptoms, and usually does away with the horrible
suffering caused by the terrible cramps that are so common in the
disease. I am even inclined to believe that a somewhat better percentage
of cases recover under the treatment, though this is doubtful. Failing
this, massage and frictions with the hands do much to relieve the
cramps, and in the cold stage, every care should be taken to maintain
the heat of the body by covering the patient with blankets and placing
around him bricks heated in the fire and wrapped round with strips of
wet blanket. During the reaction that follows on the cold stage, in
favourable cases, attempts should be made to stimulate the kidneys by
the application of mustard plasters to the loins. To attempt to give
food during the acute stage is obviously worse than useless, but there
is no harm in letting the patient suck small lumps of ice to assuage the
terrible thirst of the disease. In the stage of collapse, stimulants
naturally suggest themselves, but are seldom of any use when given
internally. A few drops of ether inhaled from a handkerchief is, if
available, perhaps the best method of stimulation, but the weakened
kidneys have quite enough to do without having to deal with alcohol, so
that it should be but sparingly resorted to, if at all. When the patient
shows such signs of recovery that it appears likely that food can be
tolerated, small quantities only of easily digestible food, such as
milk, rendered mucilaginous by the addition of a little arrowroot,
Brand’s extract, &c., should be given, but it can easily be understood
that after so severe a shock to the digestive system, the greatest care
will have to be exercised in the feeding of the patient. Finally, it
should not be forgotten that all the discharges of the patient are
virulently infective, and that they and everything soiled by them should
at once be disinfected. When the supply of disinfectants is limited, a
good plan is to place in the bed-pan and basins used a sufficiency of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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