Where the brain is attacked, water must be constantly applied to that locality, so as not to allow of an increase of temperature.
Where there is no want of bodily strength in the patient, the quickest and surest method of putting an end at once to fever, is as follows. Put him into a bath up to the shoulders, tepid 63° or 64° to begin with, and to be renewed constantly by cold water being poured over the shoulders; two persons rubbing the patient the whole time.
When he is quite fatigued, take him out, dry the body and throw the window open for air; when recovered a little, renew the operation, and so on for the third time if necessary. Then dress and go out to walk. Drink plentifully of water.
If very cold on coming out of the bath, walk without the body bandage, but put a large thick one from the hips to the arm-pits on returning home. Let the patient rest two or three hours; and if fever return repeat the foregoing treatment.
A Mr. B——, who was greatly debilitated, had, for fever, a tepid bath for half an hour to an hour and half; also many rubbing-sheets; on one occasion as many as twenty-nine in a day. If the fever resist the above treatment, then resort to the packing-sheet.
Dr. L——, for fever, ordered, five or six rubbing-sheets in succession. Head bath for a quarter of an hour. Bandage from hips to arm-pits, to be changed often, even in the night; to be much in the open air.
In typhus fever, medical men do not make the distinction between congestion of the venous and arterial systems. They imagine that inflammatory action exists, whereas it is in typhus, venous congestion: therefore, the leeching and severe depletory measures are decidedly wrong; they increase the existing evil, lower and exhaust the vital powers, and if persevered in, lead to death, or a long lingering state of convalescence. On the contrary, Hydropathy acts upon a diametrically opposite system: by the imbibition of water, containing as it does an excess of oxygen, the vital forces are sustained, the blood is decarbonised, the appetite improved, the bowels regulated, etc. etc.
Fever.—An English officer who caught a fever twenty years ago in the West Indies, wrote to Priessnitz that all his prospects in life were blighted, and that existence was almost intolerable. He came to Gräfenberg and was treated as follows:
Early in the morning packing-sheet and bath; wore heating bandage always. Breakfasted at eight o’clock, when, from nine o’clock until five o’clock in the evening, he was ordered to change the waist bandage every ten minutes. At five o’clock packing-sheet and bath.