Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
As servants, when fatigued, sleep sometimes so soundly as not to hear, and sometimes are purposely deaf, Lady Hester Stanhope had got in the quadrangle of her own apartments a couple of active fellows, a part of whose business it was to watch by turns during the night, and see that the maids answered the bell; they were, therefore, sure to be roughly shaken out of their sleep, and, in going, half stupid, into her ladyship's room, would be told to prepare a fomentation of chamomile, or elder flowers, or mallows, or the like.
Shear down a tablet or two into boiling water as much water as the blanket will absorb. The blanket may be prepared as directed in article Fomentation, using these boiling suds instead of water. Have the patient's bed ready, and spread on it a double dry sheet. Soak in the suds a piece of thick flannel large enough to go round the body under the armpits. Wring this out and put it on the patient.
It causes a gathering of heat, which stimulates the spinal nerves, and produces good effects all over the body and limbs. A broad band of extra new flannel round the lower half of the body is somewhat equivalent to fomentation got in the armchair, or in the hot pack of the lower body.
If the patient be a very strong person, and the fever very great, the fomentation to the feet may be dispensed with; but if any uncomfortable coldness is felt, or the patient not above average strength, it should always be applied. No one who has not seen it can imagine the magical effect such treatment has.
For this the treatment should be strong moist heat applied to the back, where the nerve roots of the inflamed part lie, and persistent cooling of the part which is painful. The heat may be by bran poultice, fomentation, or hot-water bag and moist flannel. The cold must not be ice, but only cold water cloths frequently renewed.
It is called Tza-chin, has a bitter taste, but when eaten with salmon imparts an agreeable zest, and effectually destroys the disagreeable smell of that fish when smoke-dried. Saint John's wort is very common, and has been successfully applied as a fomentation in topical inflammations. A kind of weed, which the natives convert into a species of flax, is in general demand.
Should the feet be cold, this cooling of the spine must not be done until they are wrapped in a hot fomentation up to the knees. Wheaten porridge, gruel, and milk diet is best. A drink may be made of hot water and lemon juice, with five or six drops of tincture of cayenne added to a tumblerful, and sweetened to taste. See Drinks. Shivering.
Again, heat expands the vessels of the body, and cold contracts them. Cooling a congested part assists to drive excess of blood out of it, and heating some other part opens accommodation for the blood so expelled. This explains our hot poultice and fomentation as used with cold cloths. Common sense will show us how to apply it as a principle of treatment in many cases.
The fomentation may then be given once a day until the pain is removed. Be quite sure that no trifling application will succeed with such a disease as this. It will not do to use less heat than will go through and through the haunches of the patient; and that amount of heat is not very small.
It may be done under the bedclothes, so as to avoid all possibility of chill. Cold cloths over the heart and chest, if they cause chilliness, may be accompanied with fomentation of the feet and legs. The temperature of a consumptive should be recorded three times a day, and if above normal the patient should stay in bed till it is reduced.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking