Monday, August 8, 2016

Yellow Fever Part 2

Herbal, or Eclectic Treatment for Yellow Fever.

In this disease, good nursing is indispensable. Let the patient have perfect rest and quietness, in a well-ventilated room. In the early stages of the disease, the diet must be confined to preparations of sago, arrow-root, barley, &; but as the disease advances, give animal broths made of lean meat, thickened with bread-crumbs, oat-meal, or barley. The strictest attention must be given to cleanliness, and the linen changed frequently. If the stomach be very irritable and the vomiting violent, give the following preparation:--

Powdered Rhubarb. . .20 grains
Powdered Saleratus. . .20 grains
Powdered Peppermint. .1 teaspoonful
Laudanum . . . . 15 drops
Brandy . . .1 tablespoonful
Boiling Water . . . 1 gill

Mix. Sweeten with loaf-sugar, and give a table-spoonful every hour till the symptoms change. The bowels must be kept open, as in all fevers. For this purpose use the following:--

Ginger . . . 2 ounces
Bayberry Bark . . .4 ounces
Cayenne Pepper. . .1/2 ounce

Dose, a teaspoonful in a little milk, with half a teaspoonful of powdered rhubarb every hour till it operates freely. Strong boneset or thoroughwort tea, taken in quantites as much as the stomach will stand, is very useful.

Captain Jonas P. Levy, who has had an extensive experience with yellow fever, states that he never knew a case of yellow fever terminate fatally, under the following treatment:--
Dissolve a table-spoonful of common salt in a wineglass of water; pour it into a tumbler, and add the juice of a whole lemon and two wingeglasses of castor-oil. An adult to take the whole at one dose. Then give a hot mustard foot-bath, with a handful of salt in the water. Wrap the patient in blankets until he perspires freely. Remove to the bed, and well wrap the patient's feet in the blanket. Afterward apply mustard plasters to the abdomen, legs, and soles of the feet. If the headache is very severe, they may be applied to the head and temples. After the fever has been broken, take forty grains of quinine and forty drops of elixir of vitrol to a quart of water. Give a wineglassful three times a day. Barley-water, lemonade, and ice-water may be used in moderation.

Here's a link to Yellow Fever, Part One

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