Domestic medicine or The family medical adviser : a manual of health. With recipes.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic medicine or The family medical adviser : a manual of health. With recipes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/64 (page 10)
    patient is generally quite free from fever, but a degree of languor and distaste for exertion remains. There are several species of ague : but the quotidian, which returns every day ; the tertian ~ which returns every other day ; and the quartan, occurring on the first and fourth day, are the principal. Every fit of ague consists of three periods,— the cold, the hot, and the sweating,—and these follow in regular succession. In the cold stage, the face and limbs become pale, the features shrink, the breathing is short, and a sensation of severe cold is felt over the whole body, which is succeeded by violent shivering : in the next stage, the heat returns to the body, which soon becomes dry; the countenance becomes flushed, acute pain is felt in the head, sometimes producing slight delirium ; the pulse is full, strong, and frequent, and the thirst urgent. These symptoms are followed first by a moisture of the skin, and then by an equable perspiration, which terminates the fit. The whole paroxysm generally occupies about eight hours. The time that elapses from the commence¬ ment of one paroxysm to the commencement of another is the interval; the time that elapses from the termina¬ tion of one paroxysm to the commencement of another is called the intermission. When agues continue for any length of time, they are apt to induce other complaints, such as dyspepsia, drop¬ sical swellings, and general debility, which sometimes end fatally. Autumnal agues are more difficult to cure, and more frequently followed by dangerous consequences than are those occurring in the spring. Debility is the principal predisposing cause of ague; and the generally exciting cause is a residence in the vicinity of damp or marshy grounds, particularly if im¬ pregnated by vegetable matter in a state of decomposition ; dampness and night air add peculiar force to the operation of marsh miasma. The treatment of this disorder divides itself into two branches: first, means to be employed during a paroxysm to stop its progress or abate its violence; or, secondly, those which may prevent a return of the paroxysm, and effect a permanent cure. On the commencement of what is called the fit, the patient should be placed between the blankets in bed, and