Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 45

3. Control the fever by sponging the body with tepid water, and relieve the pain in the throat by cold compresses, applied externally.

4. As soon as the skin shows a tendency to become scaly, apply goose grease or clean lard with a little boracic acid powder dusted in it, or better, perhaps, carbolized vaseline to relieve the itching and prevent the scales from being scattered about, and subjecting others to the contagion.

REGULAR TREATMENT.--A few drops of aconite every three hours to regulate the pulse, and if the skin be pale and circulation feeble, with tardy eruption, administer one to ten drops of tincture of belladonna, according to the age of the patient. At the end of third week, if eyes look puffy and feet swell, there is danger of Acute Bright's disease, and a physician should be consulted. If the case does not progress well under the home remedies suggested, a physician should be called at once.

_WHOOPING COUGH._

DEFINITION.--This is a contagious disease which is known by a peculiar whooping sound in the cough. Considerable mucus is thrown off after each attack of spasmodic coughing.

SYMPTOMS.--It usually commences with the symptoms of a common cold in the head, some chilliness, feverishness, {334} restlessness, headache, a feeling of tightness across the chest, violent paroxysms of coughing, sometimes almost threatening suffocation, and accompanied with vomiting.

HOME TREATMENT.--Patient should eat plain food and avoid cold drafts and damp air, but keep in the open air as much as possible. A strong tea made of the tops of red clover is highly recommended. A strong tea made of chestnut leaves, sweetened with sugar, is also very good.

1 teaspoonful of powdered alum.

1 teaspoonful of syrup.

Mix in a tumbler of water, and give the child one teaspoonful every two or three hours. A kerosene lamp kept burning in the bed chamber at night is said to lessen the cough and shorten the course of the disease.

_MUMPS._

DEFINITION.--This is a contagious disease causing the inflammation of the salivary glands, and is generally a disease of childhood and youth.

SYMPTOMS.--A slight fever, stiffness of the neck and lower jaw, swelling and soreness of the gland. It usually develops in four or five days and then begins to disappear.

HOME TREATMENT.--Apply to the swelling a hot poultice of cornmeal and bread and milk. A hop poultice is also excellent. Take a good dose of physic and rest carefully. A warm general bath, or mustard foot bath, is very good.

Avoid exposure or cold drafts. If a bad cold is taken, serious results may follow.

_MEASLES._

DEFINITION.--It is an eruptive, contagious disease, preceded by cough and other catarrhal symptoms for about four or five days. The eruption comes rapidly in small red spots, which are slightly raised.

SYMPTOMS.--A feeling of weakness, loss of appet.i.te, some fever, cold in the head, frequent sneezing, watery eyes, dry cough and a hot skin. The disease takes effect nine or ten days after exposure. {335}

HOME TREATMENT.--Measles is not a dangerous disease in the child, but in an adult it is often very serious. In childhood very little medicine is necessary, but exposure must be carefully avoided, and the patient kept in bed, in a moderately warm room. The diet should be light and nouris.h.i.+ng.

Keep the room dark. If the eruption does not come out promptly, apply hot baths.

COMMON TREATMENT.--Two teaspoonfuls of spirits of nitre, one teaspoonful paregoric, one winegla.s.sful of camphor water. Mix thoroughly, and give a teaspoonful in half a tea-cupful of water every two hours. To relieve the cough, if troublesome, flax seed tea, or infusion of slippery-elm bark, with a little lemon juice to render more palatable, will be of benefit.

_CHICKEN POX._

DEFINITION.--This is a contagious, eruptive disease, which resembles to some extent small-pox. The pointed vesicles or pimples have a depression in the center in chicken-pox, and in small pox they do not.

SYMPTOMS.--Nine to seventeen days elapse after the exposure, before symptoms appear. Slight fever, a sense of sickness, the appearance of scattered pimples, some itching and heat. The pimples rapidly change into little blisters, filled with a watery fluid. After five or six days they disappear.

HOME TREATMENT.--Milk diet, and avoid all kinds of meat. Keep the bowels open, and avoid all exposure to cold. Large vesicles on the face should be punctured early, and irritation by rubbing should be avoided.

_HOME TREATMENT OF DIPHTHERIA._

DEFINITION.--Acute, specific, const.i.tutional disease, with local manifestations in the throat, mouth, nose, larynx, windpipe, and glands of the neck. The disease is infectious, but not very contagious under the proper precautions. It is a disease of childhood, though adults sometimes contract it. Many of the best physicians of the day consider true or membranous croup to be due to this diphtheritic membranous disease thus located in the larynx or trachea. {336}

SYMPTOMS.--Symptoms vary according to the severity of the attack. Chills, fever, headache, languor, loss of appet.i.te, stiffness of neck, with tenderness about the angles of the jaw, soreness of the throat, pain in the ear, aching of the limbs, loss of strength, coated tongue, swelling of the neck, and offensive breath; lymphatic glands on side of neck enlarged and tender. The throat is first to be seen red and swollen, then covered with grayish white patches, which spread, and a false membrane is found on the mucous membrane. If the nose is attacked, there will be an offensive discharge, and the child will breathe through the mouth. If the larynx or throat are involved, the voice will become hoa.r.s.e, and a croupy cough, with difficult breathing, shows that the air pa.s.sage to the lungs is being obstructed by the false membrane.

HOME TREATMENT.--Isolate the patient, to prevent the spread of the disease.

Diet should be of the most nutritious character, as milk, eggs, broths, and oysters. Give at intervals of every two or three hours. If patient refuses to swallow, from the pain caused by the effort, a nutrition injection must be resorted to. Inhalations of steam and hot water, and allowing the patient to suck pellets of ice, will give relief. Sponges dipped in hot water, and applied to the angles of the jaw, are beneficial. Inhalations of lime, made by slaking freshly burnt lime in a vessel, and directing the vapor to the child's mouth, by means of a newspaper, or similar contrivance. Flour of sulphur, blown into the back of the mouth and throat by means of a goose quill, has been highly recommended. Frequent gargling of the throat and mouth, with a solution of lactic acid, strong enough to taste sour, will help to keep the parts clean, and correct the foul breath.

If there is great prostration, with the nasal pa.s.sage affected, or hoa.r.s.eness and difficult breathing, a physician should be called at once.

{337}

DISEASES OF WOMEN.

_DISORDERS OF THE MENSES._

1. SUPPRESSION OF, OR SCANTY MENSES.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

HOME TREATMENT.--Attention to the diet, and exercise in the open air to promote the general health. Some bitter tonic, taken with fifteen grains of dialyzed iron, well diluted, after meals, if patient is pale and debilitated. A hot foot bath is often all that is necessary.

2. PROFUSE MENSTRUATION.

HOME TREATMENT.--Avoid highly seasoned food, and the use of spirituous liquors; also excessive fatigue, either physical or mental. To check the flow, patient should be kept quiet, and allowed to sip cinnamon tea during the period.

3. PAINFUL MENSTRUATION.

HOME TREATMENT.--Often brought on by colds. Treat by warm hip baths, hot drinks (avoiding spirituous liquors), and heat applied to the back and extremities. A teaspoonful of the fluid extract of viburnum will sometimes act like a charm.

_HOW TO CURE SWELLED AND SORE b.r.e.a.s.t.s._

Take and boil a quant.i.ty of chamomile, and apply the hot fomentations. This dissolves the knot, and reduce the swelling and soreness. {338}

_LEUCORRHEA OR WHITES._

HOME TREATMENT.--This disorder, if not arising from some abnormal condition of the pelvic organs, can easily be cured by patient taking the proper amount of exercise and good nutritious food, avoiding tea and coffee. An injection every evening of one teaspoonful of Pond's Extract in a cup of hot water, after first cleansing the v.a.g.i.n.a well with a quart of warm water, is a simple but effective remedy.

_INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB._

HOME TREATMENT.--When in the acute form this disease is ushered in by a chill, followed by fever, and pain in the region of the womb. Patient should be placed in bed, and a brisk purgative given, hot poultices applied to the abdomen, and the feet and hands kept warm. If the symptoms do not subside, a physician should be consulted.

_HYSTERIA._

DEFINITION.--A functional disorder of the nervous system of which it is impossible to speak definitely; characterized by disturbance of the reason, will, imagination, and emotions, with sometimes convulsive attacks that resemble epilepsy.

SYMPTOMS.--Fits of laughter, and tears without apparent cause; emotions easily excited; mind often melancholy and depressed; tenderness along the spine; disturbances of digestion, with hysterical convulsions, and other nervous phenomena.

HOME TREATMENT.--Some healthy and pleasant employment should be urged upon women afflicted with this disease. Men are also subject to it, though not so frequently. Avoid excessive fatigue and mental worry; also stimulants and opiates. Plenty of good food and fresh air will do more good than drugs.