Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

If his ankles be weak, let them every morning be bathed, after the completion of his morning’s ablution, for five minutes each time, with bay salt and water, a small handful of bay salt dissolved in a quart of rain water (with the chill of the water taken off in the winter, and of its proper temperature in the summer time); then let them be dried; after the drying, let the ankles be well rubbed with the following liniment:

Take of—Oil of Rosemary, three drachms;

Liniment of Camphor, thirteen drachms:

To make a Liniment.

Do not let him be put on his feet early; but allow him to crawl, and sprawl, and kick about the floor, until his ankles become strong.

Do not, on any account, without having competent advice on the subject, use iron instruments or mechanical supports of any kind: the ankles are generally, by such artificial supports, made worse, in consequence of the pressure causing a further dwindling away and enfeebling of the ligaments of the ankles, already wasted and weakened.

Let him wear shoes, with straps over the insteps to keep them on, and not boots: boots will only, by wasting the ligaments, increase the weakness of the ankles.

113. Sometimes there is a difficulty in restraining the bleeding of leech-bites. What is the best method?

The difficulty in these cases generally arises from the improper method of performing it. For example—a mother endeavors to stop the hemorrhage by loading the part with rag; the more the bites discharge, the more rag she applies. At the same time, the child probably is in a room with a large fire, with two or three candles, with the doors closed, and with perhaps a dozen people in the apartment, whom the mother has, in her fright, sent for. This practice is strongly reprehensible.

If the bleeding cannot be stopped,—in the first place, the fire must be extinguished, the door and windows should be thrown open, and the room ought to be cleared of persons, with the exception of one, or, at the most, two; and every rag should be removed. “Stopping of leech-bites.—The simplest and most certain way, till the proper assistance is obtained, is the pressure of the finger, with nothing intervening. It cannot bleed through that.”[^[183]]