On preservation of health in India / by Sir Joseph Fayrer.

  • Fayrer, Joseph, Sir, 1824-1907.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On preservation of health in India / by Sir Joseph Fayrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of great service, and may save life. One thing I may caution you against—it is that you should never in such cases attempt to bleed the sufferer. Your remedies are ice to the head, cold affusion, perfect rest and quiet in the coolest shelter you can find. A few words about liver disease, which begins most pro- bably by pain in the right side and shoulder, fever, nausea, constipation, and a semi-jaundiced skin. Free purgation, with a calomel pill, compound jalap powder, or sulphate of magnesia, fomentations over the side, and very spare diet, excluding meat and alcohol, will probably give relief, and may stave off inflammation and consequent abscess. If the case is severe, seek the nearest medical aid. For ordinary bilious derangements, with foul tongue, nausea, sallow face, eyes tinged with bile, a couple of colocynth pills, and a dose* of salts next morning, with abstinence from animal food and stimulants, and avoiding exposure to heat, will remove it; but beware of any mode of life that may appear to tend to increase the disposition to these attacks, for they may end in congestion—perhaps inflammation of the liver. As to diarrhoea—if it occur when you are otherwise in good health, and if you think it may be due to any in- discretion in diet—take a dose of oil, or of Gregory’s powder, to expel the peccant matter, keep to a light diet for a few days, and all will be well. Diarrhoea may be the pre- cursor of an attack of cholera ; if that disease is about, check it at once, for reasons formerly given ; if from other causes, simple astringents, such as chalk and catechu, with restricted diet, may be sufficient to remove it. Chronic diarrhoea of the tropics requires change of climate and treatment that I cannot describe here. In connection with functional derangement of the liver, I would call your attention, having been asked to do so, to a condition which not unfrequently depends on it, often amounts to serious disease, and is always a source of trouble and annoyance to the sufferer. I refer to haemorrhoids (piles). These are vascular growths (small tumours) con- nected with the mucous membrane of the lower bowel, either within the orifice, or just external to it. They are of