The domestic medical and surgical guide, for the nursery, the cottage, and the bush : giving the best advice, in the absence of a physician or surgeon in cases of accident or sudden illness useful to families, emigrants, travellers, missionaries, village clergymen, and sea captains the government medical chest explained ... / written at the request of Mrs. Caroline Chisholm, by Jabez Hogg ... ; to which is appended advice on the preservation of health at sea.

  • Hogg, Jabez, 1817-1899
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The domestic medical and surgical guide, for the nursery, the cottage, and the bush : giving the best advice, in the absence of a physician or surgeon in cases of accident or sudden illness useful to families, emigrants, travellers, missionaries, village clergymen, and sea captains the government medical chest explained ... / written at the request of Mrs. Caroline Chisholm, by Jabez Hogg ... ; to which is appended advice on the preservation of health at sea. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    greater activity by use, so that the dose requires to be diminished. With due caution, and a proper attention to the doses ordered, no untoward circumstances need arise. Emotions and Passions of the Mind have a most powerful influence upon the disorders of the body. Hope is a mildly stimulating or tonic feeling, which is most beneficial in all cases. The influence of the imagi- nation on diseases has long been known, and the extraordinary cures we constantly hear of as effected by such absurd means as homoeopathy, mesmerism, &c., are, in fact, all referable to the influence of the imagination over a diseased body, or disordered mind. LIGHT AND AIR. Light acts as a vital stimulus to living beings: on man it promotes the development and nutrition of the body. Privation of light disposes to inactivity and melancholy; on the contrary, exposure to strong sunlight occasionally results in blindness and inflammation of the brain. In maladies indicating imperfect nutrition and sanguification, as scrofula, rickets, and wasting of the body in weakly subjects, with swelling of the limbs, &c., free exposure to sunlight is attended usually with very happy effects. Open and elevated situations probably owe part of their healthy qualities to their position with regard to sunlight, as much as to the cheerful feeling induced, and the banishment of lowness of spirits and despondency. On the other hand, in many cases, light acts injuriously on the patient; it therefore becomes necessary to exclude nearly all daylight in diseases of the eye, attended with fulness of the vessels or nervous excitement, inflammation of the brain, fever, mental irritation, severe wounds, or surgical operations, and, indeed, in all inflammatory conditions. Darkness is also necessary to produce sleep. A constant and good supply of fresh air admitted into our apartments, is a matter next in importance to daily exercise in the open air. The amount of air required to maintain the body in health is, in some measure, regulated by the employment in which the person is engaged, as well as other circumstances. The mature and robust require more than the weak, the infant, or the aged; and man more than woman. We also need more in the day than at night—in health than in sickness—in a high temperature than in a low one—during muscular exertion than when at rest—after a meal than when hungry—and on the attention being directed to the function of respiration than when it is unconsciously performed. The want of a good supply of fresh air is generally followed by listlessness, languor, and irritability. Irritability of the nervous system, as well as dulness of the intellect, is unquestionably the direct result of a want of pure air; thus it becomes a question of some moment to prevent this irritability proceeding to irritation and ill health; and also how far, as a preventive, pure air might be substituted or used in the place of medicine. Impure air is, indeed, one of the scourges of mankind, no age or sex is exempted from its influences; but especially are they, who have adopted many foolish ideas on civilisation and complied with pernicious fashions, liable to its evils; this prime and ever-operating cause of disease, depopu- lation, and premature mortality, has existed in its various modifications,