Medicine 100 Years Ago

28.

Scurvy cure is assured by the use of milk and lemon juice three times a day.

29.

Every healthy mother should nurse her offspring, as the mother's milk is a superb form of nutrient.

30.

Tobacco is a poison and this weakening habit should be destroyed by a mouth wash of silver nitrate after each meal.

31.

The present cruel method of bringing up young ladies favours the development of hysteria by rendering the whole system delicate and nervous. They are deprived of sunlight, pure air, active labour and exercise. Hot rooms, crowding the intellect to the neglect of the body, solitary vice and novel reading are amongst the many causes of this disease.

32.

Malaria : A state of the atmosphere or soil, or both, which, in certain localities, in the warm season, produces a fever more or less violent, according to the nature of the exposure.

33.

Apoplexy is most commonly found to accompany persons of a full habit of body, who have a short neck and a system disposed to a too copious sanguination.

34.

By means of the peristaltic motion, the chyle is driven into the orifices of the lacteal veins and assimilated into the blood.

35.

Smallpox, measles, croup, dysentery, scurvy, erysipelas and ague are zymotic diseases in that they are caused by the reception into the system of a poison, which is diffused through the frame, and operates upon it like a ferment or leaven.

36.

Ague is a periodical fever which occurs chiefly in situations where there are shallow, stagnant waters.

37.

Croton oil is so strong a purgative that half a drop will sometimes produce a powerful effect.

38.

In the seventy six great towns of England and Wales, there were during July, August and September of this year (1899), 14,306 infant deaths from diarrhoea.

39.

These new devices are called incubators. They have been responsible for saving the lives of many infants. They are made of iron and glass, and are divided into an upper and lower compartment. Several bottles of water are placed in the lower compartment, to be changed regularly, and the infant is placed in the upper compartment. (1892).

40.

Rooms in which patients with dysentery have been nursed should be cleaned by burning sulphur in them, and then washing them carefully with a solution of corrosive sublimate.

41.

Cyanotic attacks in infants are due to insufficient nourishment.

42.

Overfed infants suffer from indigestion and diarrhoea, and they very quickly lose weight. By careful dieting, their digestive tube can be restored to a healthy state, and they can gain weight.

43.

In the treatment of Addison's disease, decided advantage has followed the use of a combination of glycerine, in two drachm doses, with fifteen minims each of chloroform and tincture of chloride.

44.

Dementia is one of the common terminations of both mania and melancholia. Its outward signs are a vacant and puzzled look, a lack-lustre eye, a weak smile and a meaningless laugh.