If rest comes of its own accord, the liquid laudanum (T) may be omitted; and if the stomach does not stand in need of any carminatives, the oil of peppermint (U) may also be omitted, &c. The constant drink when dry may be balm tea; in which, if it suits the palate of the patient, a slice of lemon may be put, and then sweetened with sugar.
The diet, as I have before observed, should be sparing; and the patient’s palate in this should principally be consulted. The following water gruel, or rather wine soup, or whatever other name it may acquire, I have often ordered to my patients at sea; and which has suited most stomachs, and proved an agreeable mess.
No. XXV
Take oatmeal, or pounded biscuit, a couple of spoonfuls; water, a quart; a small handful of raisins; a little allspice, a little mace, tied up in a fine rag; which boil together in a tin saucepan till consumed to a pint and a half; then add a gill of good wine, red or white, and sweeten it with sugar to suit the palate. You may put a little lemon peel in, to give it an agreeable flavour.
A little roasted fresh meat will hurt nobody; and broths most certainly are good, particularly if the body is costive; but when the body is inclined to looseness, I have known the best broth to produce a dangerous flux; and this should be taken notice of.
If the patient however who has met with the accident is of a puny weak constitution, or has lost a sufficient quantity of blood by the wounds, bleeding then is not so requisite as in the former case; though the treatment otherwise must be equally the same.
By this method of proceeding, there is little fear but that the patient will soon perfectly recover, even in the highest fever that may suddenly befall a man from an accident; provided the injury is not of a dangerous tendency. But as an acrimonious habit of body is liable on its own accord to diseases, it is easily imagined that an accident may become accessory, and heighten the malignity; hence often a fever of that kind is liable to degenerate into a malignant one, or even from the accident itself, when of a dangerous nature; and this I shall explain as I proceed. I shall therefore leave the accidental fever that proceeds from an external cause, and proceed to those which take their origin internally.