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 long round worms occasion squeamishness, vomiting, a disagreeable
breath, gripes, looseness, swelling of the belly, swoonings, loathing of
food, and at other times a voracious appetite, a dry cough, convulsions,
epileptic fits, and sometimes a privation of speech. These worms have
been known to perforate the intestines, and get into the cavity of the
belly. The effects of the tape-worm are nearly the same with those of
the long and round, but rather more violent.
Andry says, the following symptoms particularly attend the _solium_,
which is a species of the tape-worm, _viz._ swoonings, privation of
speech, and a voracious appetite. The round worms called _ascarides_,
besides an itching of the _anus_, cause swoonings, and tenesmus, or an
inclination to go to stool.
CAUSES.——Worms may proceed from various causes; but they are seldom
found except in weak and relaxed stomachs, where the digestion is bad.
Sedentary persons are more liable to them than the active and laborious.
Those who eat great quantities of unripe fruit, or who live much on raw
herbs and roots, are generally subject to worms. There seems to be a
hereditary disposition in some persons to this disease. I have often
seen all the children of a family subject to worms of a particular kind.
They seem likewise frequently to be owing to the nurse. Children of the
same family, nursed by one woman, have often worms, when those nursed by
another have none.
SYMPTOMS.——The common symptoms of worms are, paleness of the
countenance, and at other times, an universal flushing of the face;
itching of the nose; this however is doubtful, as children pick their
noses in all diseases; starting, and grinding of the teeth in sleep;
swelling of the upper lip; the appetite sometimes bad, at other times
quite voracious; looseness; a sour or stinking breath; a hard swelled
belly; great thirst; the urine frothy, and sometimes of a whitish
colour; griping, or colic pains; an involuntary discharge of _saliva_,
especially when asleep; frequent pains of the side, with a dry cough,
and unequal pulse; palpitations of the heart; swoonings; drowsiness;
cold sweats; palsy; epileptic fits, with many other unaccountable
nervous symptoms, which were formerly attributed to witchcraft, or the
influence of evil spirits. Small bodies in the excrements resembling
melon or cucumber seeds are symptoms of the tape-worm.
I lately saw some very surprising effect of worms in a girl about five
years of age, who used to lie for whole hours as if dead. She at last
expired, and, upon opening her body, a number of the _teres_, or long
round worms, were found in her guts, which were considerably inflamed;
and what anatomists call an _intus susceptio_, or involving of one part
of the gut within another, had taken place in no less than four
different parts of the intestinal canal[134].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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