Illustrated lectures on ambulance work / by R. Lawton Roberts.

  • Roberts, R. Lawton.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrated lectures on ambulance work / by R. Lawton Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    150/250 (page 120)
    and oars, get quite numbed, shrunken, and of a pale bluish colour ; and this state is followed, if no help arrives, by com- plete insensibility and death. A patient in this condition should on no account be taken either near a fire or into a warm room. He should first of all be placed in a cold room, and well rubbed with snow, washed with cold water, or placed in a cold bath ; afterwards he should by very slow degrees be brought into a warmer atmosphere, and rubbed with dry and warm cloths; and, finally, a little very weak and cold stimu- lant may be given. But in this country it is generally the local effects of extreme cold, such as numbed and frost- bitten fingers and toes, that we have to deal with. For in- stance, men who have to handle cold metal, as iron rails, etc., in frosty weather, often get their fingers stiffened, cold, numb, and blue-looking; and should they unthinkingly try to warm their hands at a fire the reaction is so violent that the circulation gets blocked, and mortification of the fingers is the result. Your main object in these cases is to restore the numbed parts to their natural state as gradually as pos- sible ; you should keep the patient quite away from any fire or warm room, and rub the affected part with snow, bathe them with cold water, hold them between your own hands, and after a time wrap them in flannel. Poisons. Poisons may be described as substances which, when swal- lowed, are capable of destroying life. They produce their effects in different ways, and have been arranged in groups or classes by several authorities according to the manner in which they act. It will be quite sufficient for my purpose, however, if you consider all poisons to belong to one or other of two groups, viz. irritants, or narcotics.* By irritants I refer to those poisons which irritate and destroy the tissues of the body with which they come into contact. Such are oil of vitriol (sulphuric acid), aquafortis (nitric acid), spirit of salt (hydrochloric acid), carbolic acid, * Poisons are often grouped into three classes—irritants, narcotics, and narcotico-irrit ints, which combine the properties of irritants and narcotics. For the sake of simplicity I divide all poisons into only two classes, one of which you treat with, the other without, emetics.