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
When such persons come home cold, they ought to keep at a distance from
the fire for some time, to wash their hands in cold water, and to rub
them well with a dry cloth. It sometimes happens, that people are so
benumbed with cold, as to be quite deprived of the use of their limbs.
In this case, the only remedy is to rub the parts affected with snow,
or, where it cannot be had, with cold water. If they be held near the
fire, or plunged into warm water, a mortification will generally ensue.
Labourers in the hot season are apt to lie down, and sleep in the sun.
This practice is so dangerous, that they often wake in a burning fever.
These ardent fevers, which prove so fatal about the end of summer and
beginning of autumn, are frequently occasioned by this means. When
labourers leave off work, which they ought always to do during the heat
of the day, they should go home, or, at least, get under some cover,
where they may repose themselves in safety.
Many people follow their employments in the fields from morning till
night, without eating any thing. This cannot fail to hurt their health.
However homely their fare be, they ought to have it at regular times;
and the harder they work, the more frequently they should eat. If the
humours be not frequently replenished with fresh nourishment, they soon
become putrid, and produce fevers of the very worst kind.
Many peasants are extremely careless with respect to what they eat or
drink, and often, through mere indolence, use unwholesome food, when
they might for the same expence have that which is wholesome. In some
parts of Britain, the peasants are too careless even to take the trouble
of dressing their own victuals. Such people would live upon one meal a
day in indolence, rather than labour, though it were to procure them the
greatest affluence.
Fevers of a very bad kind are often occasioned among labourers by _poor
living_. When the body is not sufficiently nourished, the humours become
vitiated, and the solids weak; from whence the most fatal consequences
ensue. _Poor living_ is likewise productive of many of those cutaneous
diseases so frequent among the lower class of people. It is remarkable
that cattle, when pinched in their food, are generally affected with
diseases of the skin, which seldom fail to disappear, when they are put
upon a good pasture. This shews how much a good state of the humours
depends upon a sufficient quantity of proper nourishment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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