Common ailments of 1876
warning you will require a strong stomach to read the following
Diarrhoea is caused by eating unripe or decaying fruit, putrid meat, stale vegetables or fish. However they proceed from breathing poisonous air or drinking polluted water. It may be also caused by mental excitement particularly fear.
English cholera is diarrhoea accompanied by sickness and violent cramping pain. The cramp must be allayed by active rubbing while hot water bottles and flannels are applied to the feet and arm pits; the diarrhoea must be checked by strong astringents and brandy. Strong tincture of camphor is a very highly esteemed remedy. The spread of the disease is thought to be the result of a contagious poison in the air or water.
Bilious headache- bile is a yellow alkaline fluid secreted by the liver, to be poured on the food after it leaves the stomach and to help in it’s assimilation. Bilious attacks are caused by an over abundance of this fluid, which then passes in to the stomach causing the headache; frequently it goes further and produces a peculiar yellow tinge in the skin and eyeballs, which is characteristic also of jaundice.
Scorbutic eruptions arise from the blood and are caused by poor food, excess of salt meat, or want of vegetables. Sometimes boils are formed; sometimes the epidermis becomes dry and cracked the best remedies are plenty of plain nutritious food beef- tea, soup, mutton, and fresh beef, all vegetables of the cabbage kind, lettuce, cress, and sorrel plenty of milk and sweet juicy fruit. A little zinc ointment should be applied to the affected skin, or thick cream into which the juice has been pressed from the fleshy leaf of the house leek.
Ringworm is produced by a fungus which grows in the skin, generally attacking the head. at first a bright red mark is seen; this extends in curved line, till the ends join and form a ring of the size of a half penny. if not checked, similar patches break out on other parts of the body and are very troublesome. the hair must be cut off from the part affected, and the place carefully washed with strong soap several times a day; after each washing, black ink should be applied to the spot with a feather: the copperas in the ink destroys the fungus.