A good nutritious diet is an indispensable requisite in the prevention of disease. The system in comparative health requires, and should regularly receive, its proper aliment. Its daily recurring demands should be judiciously met with pure and wholesome food, in such quantity as can be readily digested, assimilated and duly appropriated for the supply of its wants. Due regard, however, must be had to the existing and peculiar condition of the digestive organs, on which mainly depends the process of supporting and perpetuating the general health.
It is not the profuse variety and the incongruous mass composed of baked, roasted, boiled and fried meats, fish and fowl, oyster, lobster, frog and turtle, with puddings, tarts, jellies, cakes and creams from the pastry room—fruits and salads, native and foreign, rich and rare—alcoholic stimulants, and cooling ices, but the simple, plain and frugal diet, properly cooked and particularly nutritious, that conduces to the most vigorous health.
Regular, temperate habits in all things, are especially commended; excesses of all kinds are reprehensible. Great and sudden changes in the habits of living are always deleterious, and must be particularly so, when an appalling and fatal epidemic is prevailing. Temperance, sobriety and cheerfulness, regular hours for meals, for rest and for business, repeated ablutions and perfect cleanliness, moderate exercise and avoidance of irregularities, persevering self-government and duly subjected passions, all contribute to health, to happiness, and the prevention of disease.
Exposure to the extremes of heat and cold should be avoided, and the clothing properly adapted to the climate—to the season and its variable temperature. Constant vigilance is necessary to guard against the numberless causes tending to produce an abnormal condition, resulting in the derangement of the stomach and bowels, or in depressing the nervous power, thus enfeebling and prostrating the general health. The neglect of these hygienic principles and essential preventives of cholera may induce the condition which temptingly invites the disease. Some are vastly more susceptible than others, and may not be able, with all their watchfulness and care, to avoid an attack, should the disease extensively prevail among us.
The premonitory symptoms requiring special attention, when the epidemic cholera is prevailing, are definitely presented in Chap. II., Sec. 2, page [56], to which special reference is made. Whenever any of these do occur, though generally supposed to present no particular characteristic of the cholera, they should, however, receive prompt attention. The loss of animation, the depression of nerve-power, the pain in the forehead and slight vertigo, the nervous agitation and oppression at the chest, with slight nausea, may in most instances be promptly removed. They should be at once patiently and perseveringly treated by the use of camphor water, prepared as follows: Take spirits of camphor, one tea-spoonful, and put it into a half-pint of cold water, and give of the mixture two tea-spoonfuls every half-hour, hour, or two hours, according to the severity of the symptoms. A strong decoction, or tea of horsemint (monarda punctata), is an excellent remedy even in this early stage. The essence of monarda, or horsemint, in doses of eight or ten drops in a little water, and repeated every hour or two, will often give prompt relief. Where the horsemint cannot be obtained, the spearmint, and the peppermint also, may prove serviceable.
Keith's concentrated Tincture of Veratrum Viride is also an excellent remedy in these premonitory symptoms. Put three or four drops into a tumblerful of cold water, and give of the mixture a tea-spoonful every hour or two hours, as occasion may require. This may be alternated with the essence, or tea of horsemint.
But another more general symptom, which may be properly termed the incipient stage of the disease, is the slight diarrhœa, usually termed painless, though it is by no means always so, but frequently the very reverse, severe and painful. This at first may be slight, but gradually increasing, soon becomes obstinate, painful, and exceedingly difficult to control. It therefore should receive attention at its very commencement, for it is in reality the stealthy invasion of the citadel—it is the cholera. The loss of life becomes imminent; treatment becomes indispensable; send at once for your physician. And, in the meantime, continue the camphor mixture, the horsemint tea, and give of the fluid extract of rhubarb and potassa, prepared according to the formula in the American Dispensatory, one or two tea-spoonfuls every hour, and, if necessary, add four or five drops of laudanum, or its equivalent in paregoric, to each dose, till relieved. In this early stage, opium in small doses may be given four or five times, but should not be continued. These remedies, properly administered, will control the great majority of cases.
If, however, the diarrhœa be uncontrolled and vomiting ensue, the recipe on page [189] will be found very efficient, and should be perseveringly administered till relief is obtained. It is prepared as follows: Chloroform, two drachms; spirits of camphor, one drachm; essence of monarda (or horsemint), three drachms; tincture of prickly-ash berries, two ounces; fluid extract of rhubarb and potassa, four ounces—mix. Give from one-half to one table-spoonful every half-hour, hour, or two hours, according to the urgency of the symptoms and the stage of the disease. This remedy is well adapted to every stage, and may be used in collapse as an injection, combined as follows: Take of the above mixture two table-spoonfuls, and add to it tincture of prickly-ash berries, two table-spoonfuls; laudanum ten drops; warm water, six table-spoonfuls—mix, and inject up the bowel. This injection should be repeated as often as required. In some desperate cases it has been repeated many times and the patients saved.
Wherever the disease prevails, all discharges from cholera patients should be promptly disinfected and disposed of. Bedding, linen, water-closets, cesspools, etc., should be thoroughly disinfected and renovated, so that no germ may remain to propagate the disease.