Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. II

by Erasmus Darwin

The stimulus of small blisters applied in succession, one every three or four days, when the patient becomes weak, is of great service by strengthening digestion, and by preventing the coldness of the extremities, owing to the sympathy of the skin with the stomach, and of one part of the skin with another.

In respect to nutriment, the patient should be supplied with wine and water, with toasted bread, and sugar or spice in it; or with sago with wine; fresh broth with turnips, cellery, parsley; fruit; new milk. Tea with cream and sugar; bread pudding, with lemon juice and sugar; chicken, fish, or whatever is grateful to the palate of the sick person, in small quantity repeated frequently; with small beer, cyder and water, or wine and water, for drink, which may be acidulated with acid of vitriol in small quantities.

3. All unnecessary motions are to be checked, or prevented. Hence horizontal posture, obscure room, silence, cool air. All the parts of the skin, which feel too hot to the hand, should be exposed to a current of cool air, or bathed with cold water, whether there are eruptions on it or not. Wash the patient twice a day with cold vinegar and water, or cold salt and water, or cold water alone, by means of a sponge. If some parts are too cold, as the extremities, while other parts are too hot, as the face or breast, cover the cold parts with flannel, and cool the hot parts by a current of cool air, or bathing them as above.

4. For the healing of ulcers, if in the mouth, solution of alum in water about 40 grains to an ounce, or of blue vitriol in water, one grain or two to an ounce may be used to touch them with three or four times a day. Of these perhaps a solution of alum is to be preferred, as it instantly takes away the stench from ulcers I suppose by combining with the volatile alcali which attends it. For this purpose a solution of alum of an ounce to a pint of water should be frequently injected by means of a syringe into the mouth. If there are ulcers on the external skin, fine powder of bark seven parts, and cerusia in fine powder one part, should be mixed, and applied dry on the sore, and kept on by lint, and a bandage.

As sloughs in the mouth are frequently produced by the previous dryness of the membranes, which line it, this dryness should be prevented by frequently moistening them, which may be effected by injection with a syringe, or by a moist sponge, or lastly in the following manner. Place a glass of wine and water, or of milk and sugar, on a table by the bedside, a little above the level of the mouth of the patient; then, having previously moistened a long piece of narrow listing, or cloth, or flannel, with the same liquor, leave one end of it in the glass, and introduce the other into the mouth of the patient; which will thus be supplied with a constant oozing of the fluid through the cloth, which acts as a capillary syphon.

The viscid phlegm, which adheres to the tongue, should be coagulated by some austere acid, as by lemon-juice evaporated to half its quantity, or by crab-juice; and then it may be scraped off by a knife, or rubbed off by flannel, or a sage leaf dipped in vinegar, or in salt and water.

[2]. Erysipelas, St. Anthony's fire, may be divided into three kinds, which differ in their method of cure, the irritated, the inirritated, and the sensitive erysipelas.

Erysipelas irritatum is attended with increase of irritation besides increase of sensation; that is, with strong, hard, and full pulse, which requires frequent venesection, like other inflammations with arterial strength. It is distinguished from the phlegmonic inflammations of the last genus by its situation on the external habit, and by the redness, heat, and tumour not being distinctly circumscribed; so that the eye or finger cannot exactly trace the extent of them.

When the external skin is the seat of inflammation, and produces sensitive irritated fever, no collection of matter is formed, as when a phlegmon is situated in the cellular membrane beneath the skin; but the cuticle rises as beneath a blister-plaster, and becomes ruptured; and a yellow material oozes out, and becomes inspissated, and lies upon its surface; as is seen in this kind of erysipelas, and in the confluent small-pox; or if the new vessels are reabsorbed the cuticle peels off in scales. This difference of the termination of erysipelatous and phlegmonic inflammation seems to be owing in part to the less distensibility of the cuticle than of the cellular membrane, and in part to the ready exhalation of the thinner parts of the secreted fluids through its pores.

This erysipelas is generally preceded by a fever for two or three days before the eruption, which is liable to appear in some places, as it declines in others; and seems frequently to arise from a previous scratch or injury of the skin; and is attended sometimes with inflammation of the cellular membrane beneath the skin; whence a real phlegmon and collection of matter becomes joined to the erysipelas, and either occasions or increases the irritated fever, which attends it.