Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitionersBuchan, William
Science
Domestic medicine : $b or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners
Buchan, William
Medicine, Popular -- Early works to 1800
The most favourable symptoms are a slow eruption, and an abatement of
the fever as soon as the pustules appear. In a mild distinct kind of
small-pox the pustules seldom appear before the fourth day from the time
of sickening, and they generally keep coming out gradually for several
days after. Pustules which are distinct, with a florid red basis, and
which fill with thick purulent matter, first of a whitish, and
afterwards of a yellowish colour, are the best.
A livid brown colour of the pustules is an unfavourable symptom; as also
when they are small and flat, with black specks in the middle. Pustules
which contain a thin watery ichor are very bad. A great number of pox on
the face is always attended with danger. It is likewise a very bad sign
when they run into one another.
It is a most unfavourable symptom when petechiæ, or purple, brown, or
black spots are interspersed among the pustules. These are signs of a
putrid dissolution of the blood, and shew the danger to be very great.
Bloody stools or urine, with a swelled belly, are bad symptoms; as is
also a continual strangury. Pale urine and a violent throbbing of the
arteries of the neck are signs of an approaching delirium, or of
convulsion-fits. When the face does not swell, or falls before the pox
come to maturity, it is very unfavourable. If the face begins to fall
about the eleventh or twelfth day, and at the same time the hands and
feet begin to swell, the patient generally does well; but when these do
not succeed to each other, there is reason to apprehend danger. When the
tongue is covered with a brown crust, it is an unfavourable symptom.
Cold shivering fits coming on at the height of the disease are likewise
unfavourable. Grinding of the teeth, when it proceeds from an affection
of the nervous system, is a bad sign; but sometimes it is occasioned by
worms, or a disordered stomach.
REGIMEN.——When the first symptoms of the small-pox appear, people are
ready to be alarmed, and often fly to the use of medicine, to the great
danger of the patient’s life. I have known children, to appease the
anxiety of their parents, bled, blistered, and purged, during the fever
which preceded the eruption of the small-pox, to such a degree, that
Nature was not only disturbed in her operation, but rendered unable to
support the pustules after they were out; so that the patient, exhausted
by mere evacuations, sunk under the disease.
When convulsions appear, they give a dreadful alarm. Immediately some
nostrum is applied, as if this were a primary disease; whereas it is
only a symptom, and far from being an unfavourable one, of the
approaching eruption. As the fits generally go off before the actual
appearance of the small-pox, it is attributed to the medicine, which by
this means acquires a reputation without any merit[88].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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