BRAIN FEVER.
In all cases where it is known there is a tendency of the blood to the head, the patient should be placed in a cool, quiet room. The hair should be shaved, or closely cut off; cloths wrung out of warm water may be kept continually over the scalp and back part of the neck. The feet and ankles as well as the wrists should also be kept moist during the height of the fever. Small doses of Epsom salts, say one quarter of a teaspoonful, dissolved in a little warm sweetened water, to a child from one to five years old, will generally relieve the blood-vessels, if given long enough to produce large passages from the bowels. The same remedy should be increased for adults. Also the bromide of potassium, administered as in case of diphtheria, is excellent.
It is usually some irregularity, over-work, or undue excitement, some way or other, that induces the alarming symptoms of brain fever.
But, at all events, it shows that there is an overcharged condition of the blood-vessels, which should be promptly relieved. Efforts to this end should be both general and special. I have here inserted the general course, which is to reduce the blood in density by keeping the system open. Applications of ice, or ice-cold baths, over the head, after the fever is at its height, does not always prove beneficial to the general circulation. Ice may cause the blood to congeal in the parts, and thus prevent a chance for the removal of the pressure, through the ascending and descending blood-vessels. Cold water checks the flow of blood, while, on the other hand, warm water assists it to flow. It is just this assistance that is needed to free the system from all poisonous irritants, and when timely and rightly applied it cannot fail to relieve.