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
SYMPTOMS.——This disease may be known by unusual weariness, heaviness,
and difficulty of breathing, especially after motion; rottenness of the
gums, which are apt to bleed on the slightest touch; a stinking breath;
frequent bleeding at the nose; crackling of the joints; difficulty of
walking; sometimes a swelling and sometimes a falling away of the legs,
on which there are livid, yellow, or violet-coloured spots; the face is
generally of a pale or leaden colour. As the disease advances, other
symptoms come on; as rottenness of the teeth, hæmorrhages, or discharges
of blood from different parts of the body, foul obstinate ulcers, pains
in various parts, especially about the breast, dry scaly eruptions all
over the body, &c. At last a wasting or hectic fever comes on, and the
miserable patient is often carried off by a dysentery, a diarrhœa, a
dropsy, the palsy, fainting fits, or a mortification of some of the
bowels.
CURE.——We know no way of curing this disease but by pursuing a plan
directly opposite to that which brings it on. It proceeds from a
vitiated state of the humours, occasioned by errors in diet, air, or
exercise; and this cannot be removed but by a proper attention to these
important articles.
If the patient has been obliged to breathe a cold, damp, or confined
air, he should be removed, as soon as possible, to a dry, open, and
moderately warm one. If there is reason to believe that the disease
proceeds from a sedentary life, or depressing passions, as grief, fear,
&c. the patient must take daily as much exercise in the open air as he
can bear, and his mind should be diverted by cheerful company and other
amusements. Nothing has a greater tendency either to prevent or remove
this disease, than constant cheerfulness and good humour. But this,
alas! is seldom the lot of persons afflicted with the scurvy; they are
generally surly, peevish, and morose.
When the scurvy has been brought on by a long use of salted provisions,
the proper medicine is a diet consisting chiefly of fresh vegetables; as
oranges, apples, lemons, limes, tamarinds, water-cresses, scurvy-grass,
brook lime, &c. The use of these, with milk, pot-herbs, new bread, and
fresh beer or cyder, will seldom fail to remove a scurvy of this kind,
if taken before it be too far advanced; but to have this effect, they
must be persisted in for a considerable time. When fresh vegetables
cannot be obtained, pickled or preserved ones may be used; and where
these are wanting, recourse must be had to the chymical acids. All the
patient’s food and drink should in this case be sharpened with cream of
tartar, elixir of vitriol, vinegar, or the spirit of sea-salt.
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