Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
3. If it should be necessary for a patient to lie down, or to sleep in
the day time, he should be advised to undress himself, and to cover his
body between sheets or blankets. The usual ligatures of garters, stocks,
knee-bands, waistcoats, and shoes, are very unfriendly to sound sleep;
hence persons who lie down with their clothes on, often awake from an
afternoon's nap in terror from dreams, or in a profuse sweat, or with
a head-ach or sick stomach; and generally out of humour. The surveyors
are so sensible of the truth of this remark, that they always undress
themselves when they sleep in the woods. An intelligent gentleman of
this profession informed me, that he had frequently seen young woodsmen,
who had refused to conform to this practice, so much indisposed in the
morning, that, after the experience of a few nights, they were forced to
adopt it.
Great care should be taken in sleeping, whether in the day time or at
night, never to lie down in damp sheets. Dr. Sydenham excepts the danger
from this quarter, when he speaks of the efficacy of travelling on
horseback in curing the consumption.
4. Patients who travel for health in this disease should avoid all
large companies, more especially evening and night parties. The air
of a contaminated room, phlogisticated by the breath of fifteen or
twenty persons, and by the same number of burning candles, is poison
to a consumptive patient. To avoid impure air from every other source,
he should likewise avoid sleeping in a crowded room, or with curtains
around his bed, and even with a bed-fellow.
5. Travelling, to be effectual in this disease, should be conducted
in such a manner as that a patient may escape the extremes of heat
and cold. For this purpose he should pass the winter, and part of the
spring, in Georgia or South-Carolina, and the summer in New-Hampshire,
Massachusetts, or Vermont, or, if he pleases, he may still more
effectually shun the summer heats, by crossing the lakes, and travelling
along the shores of the St. Laurence to the city of Quebec. He will
thus escape the extremes of heat and cold, particularly the less
avoidable one of heat; for I have constantly found the hot month of
July to be as unfriendly to consumptive patients in Pennsylvania, as
the variable month of March. By these means too he will enjoy nearly an
equable temperature of air in every month of the year; and his system
will be free from the inconvenience of the alternate action of heat
and cold upon it. The autumnal months should be spent in New-Jersey or
Pennsylvania.
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