Every Man His Own Doctor / The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

by R. T. Claridge

Diarrhœa is often the work of nature to carry off prejudicial humours; which ought not to be prevented. At the same time it must not be suffered to continue too long without resorting to measures to check it. A patient came to Gräfenberg who had suffered six weeks from this complaint, which had reduced him almost to a skeleton. He was cured in a few days.

Where abundant evacuations of glaires are alternate with constipation, cold injections are a great relief. If patients in Cholera, Diarrhœa, Cholic, or Dysentery, cannot sleep, administer a very cold foot-bath, water only half an inch deep, for fifteen minutes. Let the feet, legs, and thighs be rubbed with wet hands the whole time, then the patient should walk bare-footed in the chamber for ten minutes.

Dysentery.—Begin with one or two rubbing-sheets, then cold injections every quarter of an hour for two or three hours.

Then tepid sitz-bath, rather warmer than usual, for half an hour, followed by a large heating bandage doubled three or four times, from before the hips to the arm-pits, leaving the arms free. Change this every ten or fifteen minutes. Let the covering to the bed be light, but keep the feet warm. Drink large quantities of cold water.

When the bandage has been changed three or four times, if the patient is better, let him remain quiet; otherwise repeat the treatment.

Miss B——, attacked with dysentery attended with great pain; ordered four sitz-baths in a day, one hour each large bandage from hips to arm-pits; changed often.

Took them two days, and one in the night. These chilled her exceedingly, which Priessnitz said was as it ought to be.

Diarrhœa.—A delicate lady, ordered not to drink milk for some days, but sixteen to twenty glasses of water; take but little exercise; at noon wash with cold water; at eleven o’clock, cold sitz-bath, twenty minutes, then walk a few times in the room, with only dry sheet over the person; then sitz-bath again for twenty minutes; repeat this a third time to complete the hour.

F——, had diarrhœa two days, when Priessnitz said, “If you are not in pain, do nothing; if the contrary, take a morning rubbing-sheet, and sitz-bath three quarters of an hour; noon, the same; afternoon, sitz-bath three quarters of an hour; change bandages and walk less; drink plentifully of water.”