Those who wait upon the sick in putrid fevers, ought always to have a piece of spunge or a handkerchief dipt in vinegar, or juice of lemon, to smell to while near the patient. They ought likewise to wash their hands, and, if possible, to change their clothes, before they go into company.
CHAP. XXI.
OF THE MILIARY FEVER.
This fever takes its name from the small pustules or bladders which appear on the skin, resembling, in shape and size, the seeds of millet. The pustules are either red or white, and sometimes both are mixed together.
The whole body is sometimes covered with pustules; but they are generally more numerous where the sweat is most abundant, as on the breast, the back, &c. A gentle sweat, or moisture on the skin, greatly promotes the eruption; but, when the skin is dry, the eruption is both more painful and dangerous.
Sometimes this is a primary disease; but it is much oftener only a symptom of some other malady, as the small-pox, measles, ardent, putrid, or nervous fever, &c. In all these cases it is generally the effect of too hot a regimen or medicines.
The miliary fever chiefly attacks the idle and the phlegmatic, or persons of a relaxed habit. The young and the aged are more liable to it than those in the vigour and prime of life. It is likewise more incident to women than men, especially the delicate and the indolent, who, neglecting exercise, keep continually within doors, and live upon weak watery diet. Such females are extremely liable to be seized with this disease in child-bed, and often lose their lives by it.
CAUSES.——The miliary fever is sometimes occasioned by violent passions or affections of the mind; as excessive grief, anxiety, thoughtfulness, &c. It may likewise be occasioned by excessive watching, great evacuations, a weak watery diet, rainy seasons, eating too freely of cold, crude, unripe fruits, as plums, cherries, cucumbers, melons; &c. Impure waters, or provisions which have been spoiled by rainy seasons, long keeping, &c. may likewise cause miliary fevers. They may also be occasioned by the stoppage of any customary evacuation, as issues, setons, ulcers, the bleeding piles in men, or the menstrual flux in women, &c.
This disease in child-bed-women is sometimes the effect of great costiveness during pregnancy; it may likewise be occasioned by their excessive use of green trash, and other unwholesome things, in which pregnant women are too apt to indulge. But its most general cause is indolence. Such women as lead a sedentary life, especially during pregnancy, and at the same time live grossly, can hardly escape this disease in child-bed. Hence it proves extremely fatal to women of fashion, and likewise to those women in manufacturing towns, who, in order to assist their husbands, sit close within doors for almost the whole of their time. But among women who are active and laborious, who live in the country, and take sufficient exercise without doors, this disease is very little known.
SYMPTOMS.——When this is a primary disease, it makes its attack, like most other eruptive fevers, with a slight shivering, which is succeeded by heat, loss of strength, faintishness, sighing, a low quick pulse, difficulty of breathing, with great anxiety and oppression of the breast. The patient is restless, and sometimes delirious; the tongue appears white, and the hands shake, with often a burning heat in the palms; and in child-bed-women the milk generally goes away, and the other discharges stop.
The patient feels an itching or pricking pain under the skin, after which innumerable small pustules of a red or white colour begin to appear. Upon this the symptoms generally abate, the pulse becomes more full and soft, the skin grows moister, and the sweat, as the disease advances, begins to have a peculiar fœtid smell; the great load on the breast, and oppression of the spirits, generally go off, and the customary evacuations gradually return. About the sixth or seventh day from the eruption, the pustules begin to dry and fall off, which occasions a very disagreeable itching in the skin.