106

SYMPTOMS OF FEVER.

points out the use of water, and other cooling liquors. What is solikely to abate the heat, attenuate the humours, remove spasmsand obstructions, promote perspiration, increase the quantity ofurine, and, in shoit, produce every salutary effect in an ardent orinflammatory fever, as drinking plentifully of water, thin gruel,or any other weak liquor, of which water is the basis 1 The ne-cessity of diluting liquors is pointed out by the dry tongue, theparched skin, and the burning heat, as well as the unquenchablethirst of the patient.

In inflammatory fevers, where the thirst is great, the followingforms a grateful and cooling beverage :

Take cream of tartar half an ounce.White sugar four ounces.Fresh confection of orange three ounces.Hot water three pints.

Half a pint or more may be drunk as occasion requires.

Many other cooling liquors, which are extremely grateful to pa-tients in a fever, may be prepared from fruits, as decoctions oftamarinds, apple-tea, orange whey, and the like. Mucilaginousliquors might also be prepared from marshmallow roots, linseed,lime-tree buds, and other mild vegetables. These liquors, espe-cially when acidulated, are highly agreeable to the patient, andshould never be denied him.

Symptoms op fever. — At the beginning of a fever, the patientgenerally complains of great lassitude or weariness, and has no in-clination to move. This evidently shows the propriety of keepinghim easy, and if possible, in bed. Lying in bed relaxes the spasms,*abates the violence of the circulation, and gives nature an oppor-tunity of exerting all lier force to overcome the disease. Confine-ment to bed alone would often remove a fever at the beginning ;but when the patient struggles with the disease instead of drivingit off, he only fixes it the deeper, and renders it more dangerous.This observation is too often verified in travellers, who happenwhen on a journey to be seized with a fever. Their anxiety to getborne, induces them to travel with the fever upon them ; which con-duct seldom fails to render it fatal.

In fevers, the mind as well as the body should be kept easy.Company is seldom agreeable to the sick. Indeed every thing that

* The hypothesis of Stahl, Hoffman, and Cullen, is founded on the doctrine of aspasm on the extremities of the living fibre. According to the more elaborate princi-ples of this system, as improved by Cullen, the human body is a congeries of organs,regulated by the laws not of inanimate matter, but of life, and superintended by a mo-bile and conservative power or energy, seated in the brain, but distinct from the mindor soul, acting vrUely butnecessarily for the general health ; correcting deviations, andsupplying defects, not'from a knowledge and choice of the means, but by a pre-estab-lished relation between the changes produced, and the ¿notions reijuired for the resto-ration of health; and operating, therefore, through the medium of the moving fibres,upon whose healthy or unhealthy state depends the health or unhealthiness of the

feaeral frame, which fibres he regarded with Stahl, as simple nerves, the muscularlaments being nothing more than their extremities, and by no means possessed of anindependent «i» insita. Ed.