2. You will see, every summer, a paragraph in the newspapers recommending the application of ice to the head in case of threatened sun-stroke, or after sun-stroke. Do not believe all you see in the papers. Just sit down and reason a moment. Think of the great, extreme transition from the powerful heat of the sun’s rays on the brain to that of the application of ice! It requires but little thought to convince one that the extreme contrast must give such a shock to the brain (or blood therein) as nature cannot resist. Did you ever know a patient to recover from sun-stroke when ice had been applied to his head? I think not.
I have known one to recover from warm, moist applications. Let the head be kept wet (moist) with tepid water, and covered over by a dry cloth. He cannot swallow. Do not choke him by villanous whiskey poured into the mouth. Having placed him in a warm bed, removed his clothes, and made him comfortable, send for a physician.
“Accidents will happen.”
Yes, and every family should be prepared for them.
1. As a remedy against fatal results, in severe cases, and for deliverance from pain, even in smaller accidents, every family should keep in the house an ounce bottle of tincture of arnica, the cost of which is trifling. Keep it well labelled, and out of the reach of children. To drink it is injurious.
2. For a bruise, or any injury, put half a teaspoonful of the arnica into a teacupful of tepid water, and bathe tenderly the wound. Then wet a cloth in the liquid, bind it on with a dry cloth outside to exclude the air. When dry, if pain or tenderness remains, renew the application. This will soon reduce any “bump” on your little ones’ heads, except a real phrenological “bump.” A woman once brought a boy to my office, to have me give her some “liniment for a bad bump on the child’s head,” showing me the place.
“Madam,” I said, “I think a considerable persuasion, with plenty of patient kindness, will do more than medicine to reduce that bump. It is called, by phrenologists, ‘firmness.’ By the development, I should judge that the boy was very stubborn.”
3. For burns and scalds, keep in the house a vial of tincture of urtica urens. Apply it to burns as above directed for wounds. When the smarting ceases, and the wound is whitish, omit it, and dress the wound with a little mutton tallow on a linen cloth.
Keep no patent medicines about; then you will be less likely to be dosing with them. It is hard to tell what are good, and do not make a medical depot of your stomach to ascertain.