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
Sometimes the head-ach proceeds from the repulsion or retrocession of
the gout, the erysipelas, the small-pox, measles, itch, or other
eruptive diseases. What is called a _hemicrania_ generally proceeds from
crudities or indigestion. Inanition, or emptiness, will often also
occasion head-achs. I have often seen instances of this in nurses who
gave suck too long, or who did not take a sufficient quantity of solid
food.
There is likewise a most violent, fixed, constant, and almost
intolerable head-ach, which occasions great debility both of body and
mind, prevents sleep, destroys the appetite, causes a _vertigo_, dimness
of sight, a noise in the ears, convulsions, epileptic fits, and
sometimes vomiting, costiveness, coldness of the extremities, &c.
The head-ach is often symptomatic in continual and intermitting fevers,
especially quartans. It is likewise a very common symptom in hysteric
and hypochondriac complaints.
When a head-ach attends an acute fever, with pale urine, it is an
unfavourable symptom. In excessive head-achs, coldness of the
extremities is a bad sign.
When the disease continues long, and is very violent, it often
terminates in blindness, an apoplexy, deafness, a _vertigo_, the palsy,
epilepsy, &c.
In this disease the cool regimen in general is to be observed. The diet
ought to consist of such emollient substances as will correct the
acrimony of the humours, and keep the body open; as apples boiled in
milk, spinage, turnips, and such like. The drink ought to be diluting;
as barley-water, infusions of mild mucilaginous vegetables, decoctions
of the sudorific woods, &c. The feet and legs ought to be kept warm, and
frequently bathed in lukewarm water; the head should be shaved, and
bathed with water and vinegar. The patient ought as much as possible to
keep in an erect posture, and not to lie with his head too low.
When the head-ach is owing to excess of blood, or an hot bilious
constitution, bleeding is necessary. The patient may be bled in the
jugular vein, and the operation repeated if there be occasion. Cupping
also, or the application of leeches to the temples, and behind the ears,
will be of service. Afterwards a blistering-plaster may be applied to
the neck behind the ears, or to any part of the head that is most
affected. In some cases it will be proper to blister the whole head. In
persons of a gross habit, issues or perpetual blisters will be of
service. The body ought likewise to be kept open by gentle laxatives.
But when the head-ach proceeds from a copious vitiated _serum_
stagnating in the membranes, either within or without the skull, with a
dull, heavy, continual pain, which will neither yield to bleeding nor
gentle laxatives, then more powerful purgatives are necessary, as pills
made of aloes, resin of jalap, or the like. It will also be necessary in
this case to blister the whole head, and to keep the back part of the
neck open for a considerable time by a perpetual blister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account