Treatment.— Patients suffering from sim-traumatism must be kept as quiet as possible in a cool, airy, and darkened room. For a time the head should be kept shaved, and cold applied to the scalp. The bowels must be free; food should be light and unstimulating, and alcohol in every form strictly forbidden. Restlessness and insomnia are best treated by the bromides. For a considerable time the patient will be conscious of loss of memory, and feebleness of intellectual power and of the faculty of concentration. He may be irritable, liable to headache, and extremely sensitive to heat more particularly the heat and glare of the sun. So soon as he is able to be moved he must be sent to a cold climate, and there remain until all trace of his illness has completely disappeared. Indeed, it is questionable if the subject of pronounced sun-trauma should ever again risk the dangers of a tropical climate; certain it is that he should not return to the tropics so long as the slightest evidence of cerebral trouble remains.
For persistent headache and other signs of chronic meningitis, courses of the iodides and bromides, repeated blistering of the neck and scalp, together with careful dieting and general hygiene, should be tried. In not a few instances, in spite of the most careful treatment, medicinal and climatic, serious permanent disease of the encephalon remains, giving rise to various and often incurable troubles, and, very commonly, to distressing intellectual enfeeblement.
PREVENTION OF HEAT-STROKE
In heat-stroke climates great attention should be paid to the general health; if this be not satisfactory, exposure to the sun and to high temperatures must, so far as possible, be avoided. Alcoholic drinks, gluttony, excess of animal food, too much tobacco -smoking— in fact, dissipation of all sorts— are especially to be deprecated. Individuals suffering from malarial or other fevers, or from chronic liver or kidney disease, run great risk if they are careless about exposing themsehestothesun. Violent
