HINTS RESPECTING CHOLERA:
With DIRECTIONS which may be most safely followed when Medical Aid canned be immediately obtained.
As it is easier to prevent than to cure this dangerous disease, the following cautions should be observed:— Great moderation in diet, and in the use of fermented and spirituous liquors. Raw vegetables and unripe fruit should be carefully avoided; a diet of light animal food is the best. The state of the skin should be particularly attended to, so that perspiration be not checked suddenly. The feet should be kept dry and warm. Flannel should be worn next the skin, or at least a flannel bandage round the body. The utmost personal cleanliness is to be maintained by frequent washing. Every room should be ventilated by opening the doors and windows frequently in the daytime. Under the proper observance of cleanliness and ventilation, this disease seldom spreads in families, and rarely passes to those about the sick under such favourable circumstances, unless they happen to be peculiarly predisposed. Gentle exercise in the open air is highly useful to preserve the general health of persons exposed to the risk of infection. Glauber's and Epsom salts, as well as other cold purgatives, are not to be taken without the express prescription of a medical man. No specific against Cholera is known; and all the patent drugs offered with this pretention are absolutely injurious. The only preventives are a healthy body and a cheerful mind.
In most cases, a day or two days before a person is seriously affected by the disease, he has some disorder of stomach, giddiness, and a loose state of bowels, with frequent calls to go to stool. When these symptoms appear, he must confine himself to bed, and take a pill of two grains of calomel and one grain of opium, to be repeated in two or three hours, and followed in the course of four or five hours by a table spoonful of castor oil. A small quantity of brandy and hot water may be taken at intervals. It is of the utmost importance to pay particular attention to these early indications of the disease.
When the most alarming part of the disorder has actually commenced, the patient complains first of giddiness and nervous agitation, and is extremely feeble; his features become sharp and contracted; his lips, face, neck, hands, and feet, blue; the fingers and toes are contracted; the pulse is so small as to be almost extinct; the skin is deadly cold and shrivelled; the voice nearly gone; breathing quick; the patient speaks in a whisper; suffers cramps in his limbs and body; his urine is totally suppressed; he vomits and purges a liquid like rice-water or whey.
