Health in Africa : a medical handbook for European travellers and residents, embracing a study of malarial fever as it is found in British Central Africa / by D. Kerr Cross ; with an introduction by Sir Harry Johnston.

Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in Africa : a medical handbook for European travellers and residents, embracing a study of malarial fever as it is found in British Central Africa / by D. Kerr Cross ; with an introduction by Sir Harry Johnston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    anchor has been quinine. Here, however, the best authorities affirm that this drug is not so effectual, and the explanation given is that black-water fever is not purely malarial. The following treatment is on the right lines. Make certain that the bowels have been freely acted upon, then give a full dose of Warburg’s tincture (say 6 or 8 of the tabloids, as prepared by Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.). If this should be parted with, try again. If not successful, then dis- solve the tabloids and give them in the form of an enema with thin starch. If there is a free flow of urine coloured like porter, the patient should be kept warm and comfortable. If there is the slightest sign of a remission of the fever, give quinine in a full dose by the mouth, or by the bowels (10 grains), and alternately with the quinine give 10 drops, freely diluted with water, of the tincture of the perchloride of iron. The consensus of medical opinion inclines to the belief that quinine is not so active in haemo- globinuric fever. Some withhold quinine and give 10-clrop doses of oil of turpentine every four hours. A blister to the back of the neck is often beneficial. If there is any sign of a suppression of the urine, experience tells us that the kidneys are most relieved by those means which promote perspiration, and by applications to the loins. Baths are to be resorted to. Considering everything, a hot-mustard bath given in the following way is the best: the patient, wrapped in hot blankets, sits for half-an-hour, with his feet and legs fully immersed in water as hot as can be borne, to which a liberal supply of mustard has been added. The blankets are to envelop the patient, so that he is steamed indeed. This relieves the cerebral congestion and headache, and should bring on a free perspiration. The bath may be repeated three or four times in the day. If the head and hands of the patient are bathed with cold water, it will afford great comfort to the already overtaxed sufferer. Hot fomentation cloths could also, every half hour, be applied to the small of the back during the intervals of the hot foot-bath, or a warm pack could be given several times a day. When in spite of all that is done the skin is hot and dry, little urine passed, with a constant pain at the small of the back, indicating congestion of the kidneys, we get the best of results from the hypodermic injection of ^ grain of pilocarpine. This should cause beads of perspiration to break out all over the body. If there is great bilious vomiting, together with suppression of the urine, we must act powerfully on the liver. To this end give 2V °f a grain of elaterium under the skin. This should produce profuse watery evacuations. Another way is to give 5 grains of the compound powder of elaterium, by putting it on the tongue