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
If the mouth be foul, and the tongue dry and chapped, it ought to be
frequently washed, and the throat gargled with water and honey,
sharpened with a little vinegar or currant jelly.
During the rising of the small-pox, it frequently happens that the
patient is eight or ten days without a stool. This not only tends to
heat and inflame the blood, but the fæces, by lodging so long in the
body, become acrid, and even putrid; from whence bad consequences must
ensue. It will therefore be proper, when the body is bound, to throw in
an emollient clyster every second or third day, through the whole course
of the disease. This will greatly cool and relieve the patient.
When petechiæ, or purple, black, or livid spots appear among the
small-pox, the Peruvian bark must immediately be administered in as
large doses as the patient’s stomach can bear. For a child, two drachms
of the bark in powder may be mixed in three ounces of common water, one
ounce of simple cinnamon-water, and two ounces of the syrup of orange or
lemon. This may be sharpened with the spirits of vitriol, and a
table-spoonful of it given every hour. If it be given to an adult in the
same form, he may take at least three or four spoonfuls every hour. This
medicine ought not to be trifled with, but must be administered as
frequently as the stomach can bear it; in which case it will often
produce very happy effects. I have frequently seen the petechiæ
disappear, and the small-pox, which had a very threatening aspect, rise
and fill with laudable matter, by the use of the bark and acids.
The patient’s drink ought likewise in this case to be generous, as wine
or strong negus acidulated with spirits of vitriol, vinegar, the juice
of lemon, jelly of currants, or such like. His food must consist of
apples roasted or boiled, preserved cherries, plums, and other fruits of
an acid nature.
The bark and acids are not only necessary when the petechiæ or putrid
symptoms appear, but likewise in the lymphatic or crystalline small-pox,
where the matter is thin, and not duly prepared. The Peruvian bark seems
to possess a singular power of assisting Nature in preparing laudable
pus, or what is called good matter; consequently it must be beneficial
both in this and other diseases, where the crisis depends on a
suppuration. I have often observed where the small-pox were flat, and
the matter contained in them quite clear and transparent, and where at
first they had the appearance of running into one another, that the
Peruvian bark, acidulated as above, changed the colour and consistence
of the matter, and produced the most happy effects.
When the eruption subsides suddenly, or, as the good women term it, when
the small-pox _strike in_, before they have arrived at maturity, the
danger is very great. In this case blistering-plasters must be
immediately applied to the wrists and ancles, and the patient’s spirits
supported with cordials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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