Papers on Health

by John Kirk

It is sometimes thought that there is some "magic" in one person's hands that is not in another's. Here is a case in which one person has rubbed, he thinks, perfectly right, and no relief has come. Another brings relief in a few minutes. It is concluded that some mysterious "gift" is possessed by the latter. This may do well enough for an excuse when you do not care to have the trouble of curing your fellow-creatures, but it is not true. If we are to "covet earnestly the best gifts," it must be possible for all of us to get them. "The gift of healing" is surely one worth "coveting," and we think must be within reach, or we should not be told so to covet it. See also Head, Rubbing the.

Massaging the Arm.

Measles.—An attack of this disease generally begins with a feeling of weariness. Then it appears as running and irritation of the eyes and nostrils, at which stage it is often taken for a common cold, the symptoms being very similar. Then this irritation spreads more or less over all the breathing apparatus, and finally the eruption appears in smaller or larger red patches, sometimes almost covering the face and other parts. The usual advice given is to keep the sufferer warm. It is good to do this so far as avoiding chills is concerned, but if the room be overheated and kept close and dark, only harm will ensue. The blinds of the windows should be kept drawn up to their full height, to admit as much light as possible. Fresh air should be admitted by keeping windows open. If the patient complains of sore eyes, these may be shaded by a screen, but not by lowering the blinds. This admission of free air and light is a very great preventive of the "dregs" which form so troublesome a feature in measles. The room can easily be kept sufficiently warm by fire in winter, even if the window be open. The patient must not be allowed to read or use his eyes much, or very serious mischief may ensue.

When it first appears in eyes and nose, a good large bran poultice (see) should be placed at the back of the neck and down between the shoulders. Cold cloths should then be pressed over the brow and upper face. Do this for an hour. Give to drink lemon or orange drinks (see Drinks), taken hot, and in small quantities at a time. If this treatment is well done several times, the trouble may possibly be checked at the beginning. Where it has gone further, and cough shows irritation of the air tubes and lungs, then foment the feet and legs while applying cold cloths over the chest, as in bronchitis (see). If there be fever, and no signs of rash, then, to bring it out, pack in the soapy blanket (see). Where this cannot well be done, a most effectual pack is a small sheet wrung out of warm water and wrapped round the whole body, with a blanket wrapped well round it outside to retain the steam about the skin. But the soap is better. As a rule, there is not much need for further treatment when the rash fully develops. If, however, fever still remains, rub all over with hot vinegar. This is best done in the evening.

When all fever has subsided, a good rubbing of the back only may be given with warm olive oil. This may be done once a day. The feet should be watched lest they get clammy or cold.

For food, wheaten-meal porridge and milk food generally is the best. Do not give too much food at first, and keep the bowels well open.

Medicines.—The delusion that health can be restored by swallowing drugs is so widespread that we think it well to quote the following wise words from the Lancet:—

"An eminent physician not long deceased was once giving evidence in a will case, and on being asked by counsel what fact he chiefly relied upon as establishing the insanity of the testator, replied without a moment's hesitation: 'Chiefly upon his unquestioning faith in the value of my prescriptions.' It might perfectly well be contended that this evidence failed to establish the point at issue, and that faith in the prescriptions of a physician hardly deserved to be stigmatised in so severe a manner. But admitting this, there is still little to be said in favour of the sagacity, even if we admit the sanity, of the numerous people who spend money and thought over the business of physicking themselves, and who usually, if not indeed always, bring this business to an unfortunate conclusion. The whole tendency of what may be called popular pharmacy during the last few years has been in the direction of introducing to the public a great variety of powerful medicines, put up in convenient forms, and advertised in such a manner as to produce in the unthinking, a belief that they may be safely and rightly administered at all times and seasons, as remedies for some real or supposed malady. All this, of course, has been greatly promoted by column after column of advertisement in magazines and lay newspapers; but we are compelled to admit that the medical profession cannot be held free from some amount of blame in the matter or from some responsibility for the way in which drugs have lately been popularised and brought into common use as articles of domestic consumption. Medical men have failed, we think, sufficiently to impress upon the public and upon patients that the aim of reasonable people should be to keep themselves in health rather than to be always straying, as it were, upon the confines of disease and seeking assistance from drugs in order to return to conditions from which they should never have suffered themselves to depart. The various alkaline salts and solutions, for example, the advertisements of which meet us at every turn, and which are offered to the public as specifics, safely to be taken, without anything so superfluous as the advice of medical men, for all the various evils which are described by the advertisers as gout or as heartburn, or as the consequences of 'uric acid,' do unquestionably, in a certain proportion of cases, afford temporary relief from some discomfort or inconvenience. They do this notwithstanding persistence in the habit or in the indulgence, whatever it may be, the over-eating, the want of exercise, the excessive consumption of alcohol or of tobacco, which is really underlying the whole trouble which the drugs are supposed to cure and which at the very best they only temporarily relieve, while they permit the continuance of conditions leading ultimately to degeneration of tissue and to premature death. This is the moral which it is, we contend, the duty of the profession to draw from the daily events of life. The natural secretions of the human stomach are acid, and the acidity is subservient to the digestive functions. It cannot be superseded by artificial alkalinity without serious disturbance of nutrition; and the aim of treatment, in the case of all digestive derangements, should be to cure them by changing the conditions under which they arise, not to palliate them for a time by the neutralisation of acid, which may, indeed, give relief from present trouble, but which leaves unaltered the conditions upon which the trouble really depends. Those who look down the obituary lists of the newspapers will be struck by the fact that large numbers of people, in prosperous circumstances, die as sexagenarians from maladies to which various names are given but which are, as a rule, evidences of degeneration and of premature senility, while many who pass this period go on to enter upon an eighth or ninth decade of life. The former class, we have no doubt, comprise those who have lived without restraint of their appetites, and who have sought to allay some of the consequences thence arising by self-medication, while the latter class comprises those who have lived reasonably, and who, if annoyed by imperfect digestion, have sought relief by ascertaining and by abandoning the errors from which it sprang."

Among the most pernicious and dangerous of all the patent medicines on the market are the so-called "Headache Powders," whose almost instantaneous effects testify to the potency of the drugs they contain. Such powerful agents carry their own condemnation, for they cannot in the nature of things remove the cause of the pain; hence their action is limited to narcotising the nerves. The disease continues, the damage goes on, but the faithful sentinels are put to sleep. These headache powders so increased the deaths from heart failure in New York City a couple of years ago that it became necessary to warn the public against them.