Observations on naval hygiene and scurvy : more particularly as the latter appeared during a polar voyage / by Alex. Armstrong.

  • Armstrong, Alexander, Sir, 1818-1899.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on naval hygiene and scurvy : more particularly as the latter appeared during a polar voyage / by Alex. Armstrong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    understand. There is, in my opinion, no circum- stance in connexion with this disease, that can in any manner justify such a proceeding, and I con- sider the use of the lancet in any form of Scurvy to be highly reprehensible. More I need not express, less I could not say in condemnation of a practice so much at variance with all sound principles of medicine in the treatment of Scurvy. In the acute form nothing affords such early relief as promoting diaphoresis, but it requires much larger doses of diaphoretic medicine than is usually given, to produce an effect in this disease. Dover’s powder I found the most certain and efficacious medicine, aided occasionally by others; this drug, together with confinement to bed and warm diluent drinks, will generally establish per- spiration, and its establishment is always accom- panied by more or less mitigation of the febrile symptoms, and that restlessness and anxiety which is always present. The exhibition of a full dose of an anodyne at night has a very tranquillizing effect, altliough it may not induce sleep ; and it is in this form of the disease that opiates appeared to me to be particularly serviceable. When the acute symp- toms subside, the treatment may be conducted as in the other forms of the disease. The state of the gums in acute Scurvy is a source of great pain and uneasiness; they become hot, red, and exquisitely painful, and their condition contributes much to produce that general feeling of restless-