Kennedy on diseases of the skin / Donald Kennedy.

  • Kennedy, Donald, 1812-1889.
Date:
[1871], ©1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Kennedy on diseases of the skin / Donald Kennedy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    f k * \ * . . ' INTRODUCTION. M^ojrb were formerly removed by eight different methods : 1. I^ri©- TiON; 2. Bathing ; 3. Sweating; 4. Fasting ; 5. Purging ; 6. Vomit¬ ing ; To Urine ; 8. Salivation. t The more enlightened medical luminaries of the present day have discarded all these methods except purging and salivation. Y et there are many cases in which all these might be profitably employed, more particularly in diseases of the Lymph and the Skin itself. 1. Friction, where the circulation is languid, the body thin, and the flesh cold and clammy, and the skin covered with Salt-Rheum pimples, — friction, or rubbing the flesh with a coarse towel to raise a glow of heat and add vigor to the skin, will enable the skin to throw off much offensive matter. % . 2. Bathing in warm water relaxes the channels of the circulation, par¬ ticularly the Lymphatic, which contain all the mischief, and enables Nature to throw off into the stomach. 3. Sweating acts upon the system in the same manner as bathing. If a few blood-stirring1 herbs be added to the water, and the aroma or essence of them received into the system with the steam, it will make it more effectual. 4. Fasting, or as it is more commonly called dieting, was, a few years ago, a very fashionable way of curing humors : in some few cases of gross and full habits it may do good ; but, taken as a whole, it has injured ninety where it has cured ten. I have seen hundreds whose constitutions were irretrievably injured by a severe course of dieting. Nursing mothers in particular have suffered from this. When there is nursing sore mouth, and they have to live on crackers and tea, there is nothing to nourish the sys¬ tem ; the acrid humors get the upperhand, and corrode the very vitals. In the first advertisement I had ever written, I concluded the last sentence 'with, u Fat the best you can get, and enough of it.” From that day to tills I never saw a case where I could give a different advice. 5. Purging is the grand method of the present generation in curing humors, and no doubt the correct one ; but the why and wherefore of this