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
We would recommend no other medicinal preparation but two or three mild
purges, which ought to be suited to the age and strength of the patient.
The success of inoculators does not depend on the preparation of their
patients, but on their management of them while under the disease. Their
constant care is to keep them cool, and their bodies gently open, by
which means the fever is kept low, and the eruption greatly lessened.
The danger is seldom great when the pustules are few; and their number
is generally in proportion to the fever which precedes and attends the
eruption. Hence the chief secret of inoculation consists in regulating
the eruptive fever, which generally may be kept sufficiently low by the
methods mentioned above.
The regimen during the disease is in all respects the same as under the
natural small-pox. The patient must be kept cool, his diet should be
light, and his drink weak and diluting, &c. Should any bad symptoms
appear, which is seldom the case, they must be treated in the same way
as directed in the natural small-pox. Purging is not less necessary
after the small-pox by inoculation than in the natural way, and ought by
no means to be neglected.
CHAP. XXIV.
OF THE MEASLES.
The measles appeared in Europe about the same time with the small-pox,
and have a great affinity to that disease. They both came from the same
quarter of the world, are both infectious, and seldom attack the same
person more than once. The measles are most common in the spring season,
and generally disappear in summer. The disease itself, when properly
managed, seldom proves fatal; but its consequences are often very
troublesome.
CAUSE.——This disease, like the small-pox, proceeds from infection, and
is more or less dangerous according to the constitution of the patient,
the season of the year, the climate, &c.
SYMPTOMS.——The measles, like other fevers, are preceded by alternate
fits of heat and cold, with sickness, and loss of appetite. The tongue
is white, but generally moist. There is a short cough, a heaviness of
the head and eyes, drowsiness, and a running at the nose. Sometimes
indeed the cough does not come before the eruption has appeared. There
is an inflammation and heat in the eyes, accompanied with a defluxion of
sharp rheum, and great acuteness of sensation, so that they cannot bear
the light without pain. The eye-lids frequently swell so as to occasion
blindness. The patient generally complains of his throat; and a vomiting
or looseness often precedes the eruption. The stools in children are
commonly greenish; they complain of an itching of the skin, and are
remarkably peevish. Bleeding at the nose is common, both before and in
the progress of the disease.
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