Hints to Travellers, Scientific and General, Vol. 2 / Tenth edition, revised and corrected

by Royal Geographical Society

Treatment.—The eye should be carefully washed, the eyelids being opened and clean, cold water allowed to run over them and over the eye; any particles of dust must be removed—for this purpose a small clean camel-hair brush will be found useful. A lotion should be made consisting of six grains of boric acid, or two grains of sulphate of zinc, to an ounce of water, and ten drops or more of this should be dropped on to the eyeball six or eight times a day. To prevent the lids sticking together during the night, they should be smeared with vaseline or a salve containing 4 grains of calomel to an ounce of vaseline. Sometimes hot fomentations give relief.

Ophthalmia, Purulent.

This is a more serious inflammation, and is caused by some poison, e.g., germs carried by flies, or by the fingers from unhealthy sores and discharges. It may also result from injury, such as a septic wound.

Symptoms.—The symptoms of simple ophthalmia are present, but are all intensified, the eyelids are swollen and the eyeballs red, there is a discharge of yellow matter or pus, and the patient feels ill. There is great danger of the affected eye infecting the sound one, therefore warn the patient not to touch the sound eye for fear of infecting it. There is also great danger lest the attendant’s own eyes should become infected.

Treatment.—The patient should be kept in bed and the eyes should be shielded from bright light. Protect the sound eye (especially when the affected one is being washed) by placing a pad of wool or lint over it, kept in its place by strips of strapping so as effectually to close the eye and prevent infection. Thoroughly wash out the space between the eyelids and the eye, and remove any matter or foreign body which may be found.

When the inflamed surfaces are clean, wash them very thoroughly with a solution of corrosive sublimate, 1 in 5000, and finally smear a little vaseline along the edges of the lids, to prevent them sticking together. This treatment must be repeated as frequently as possible. Once a day the inflamed surfaces may be brushed over with a solution of nitrate of silver, 10 grains to the ounce, applied with a camel’s-hair brush, followed immediately by the application of a few drops of common salt solution.

Hot fomentations may give relief. When this is so, the eye should be kept covered with a pad of moist lint, which must be changed frequently. Benefit has followed the administration of very large doses of salicylate of soda.

Piles.

Piles are very common in the tropics, and are often due to want of exercise, chronic constipation, dysentery, too free use of alcohol, and over-eating. No one who suffers from piles should become a traveller till skilled advice has been obtained.

Internal Piles, though not usually painful, are by their frequent bleeding a cause of anæmia and debility; they lie inside the orifice of the bowel, but sometimes they come down on straining, and are then nipped by the muscle surrounding the opening, and may swell up, become very painful, and bleed profusely.