Always go on deck when you are able to do so, even if you are carried up by your friends or the stewards and deposited in your chair like an armful of wet clothing. Wrap yourself well against the cold, and on the first instant of chillness get more covering or go below. Whenever you feel the impulse to feed the fishes in the early stages of a fit of sea-sickness always go to the lee side of the ship (the one the wind blows from) and never to windward. By so doing you will save a considerable amount of damage to your clothing, and also to that of any who may be near you.
Many persons will tell you that it is an excellent thing to be sea-sick, as you are so much better for it afterwards. If you are a sufferer you will do well to accept their statements as entirely correct, since you are thereby consoled and soothed, and the malady doesn't care what you think about it, one way or the other.
And now comes a bit of advice which might have been given at the opening of this dissertation on the discomforts of the heaving deep, but has been reserved to the end in the hope that it will leave a lasting impression. When the ship casts loose from the dock, or lifts her anchor and gets under way, you should think of anything and everything except sea-sickness, and if any one starts the topic in your hearing leave him and walk away, or ask him to change the subject. If you cannot be thus abrupt, change it for him by starting a political discussion or other agreeable wrangle; do anything rather than allow a continuation of his remarks. Many a man and many a woman has been talked into being sea-sick, or has meditated and wondered on the possibility of it till the malady has put in an appearance. We all know how much the mind dominates the body, how bad news takes away the appetite and good news increases it, and we have all heard how a well man was driven to his bed by the concentrated efforts of a dozen practical jokers who separately informed him that he looked very pale and something must be the matter with him. Don't talk or think of sea-sickness; you will know it fast enough when it comes, and till that time it is the wisest course to assume that you are to be the healthiest passenger on the ship.
Prof. A. G. Wilkinson, of Washington, D.C., says:
"During Atlantic crossings for four years past I found but one instance in which from twenty to thirty grains of bromide of soda in ice-water three times daily for four days, commencing two days before sailing, failed to prevent loss of a single meal. Get dry powders put up in foil and enclosed in ground-stoppered bottles, to prevent deliquescence. I learned this from experimenting for several years with chloral and the various bromides. Soda alone was never distasteful. Dr. G. M. Beard, of New York, was independently experimenting at the same time, and first published his conclusions. After vomiting commences he recommends,
Bromide of soda, ʒi. Tinct. belladonna, xxx guttæ. Aqua, ℥vi.
Teaspoonful every ten minutes until relieved.
A lady friend had never been able to take a single meal at sea; the second day out, while she was sick, I gave her the above, and she took every meal for the rest of the voyage."
CHAPTER VI.
SPECIAL ADVICE TO LADIES.
For the following the author is indebted to a lady who has made several trans-Atlantic voyages, and is consequently familiar with the necessities and comforts of ocean travel: