The house surgeon and physician : designed to assist heads of families, travellers, and sea-faring people, in discerning, distinguishing, and curing diseases : with concise directions for the preparation and use of a numerous collection of the best American remedies : together with many of the most approved, from the shop of the apothecary : all in plain English / by a physician and surgeon.

  • Hand, William M.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The house surgeon and physician : designed to assist heads of families, travellers, and sea-faring people, in discerning, distinguishing, and curing diseases : with concise directions for the preparation and use of a numerous collection of the best American remedies : together with many of the most approved, from the shop of the apothecary : all in plain English / by a physician and surgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    33 LOCKJAW. Afler the attack, opium in conjunction with the above remedies, and in large doses as in locked-jaw, may- smooth the road to death, but is never perhaps effica- cious enough to restore to health. In this disease, as well as in many others, the intru- sions of company is distressing to the patient; in all such cases, the patient's quiet should not be sacrificed to impertinent curiosity, nor to ill timed obsequious- ness, nor yet to the officious teasings of old women, either in or out of the practice of medicine. LOCK-JAW. Sometimes this disease arises without any previous injury, more especially in warm climates, and near the sea. Robust, vigorous, middle-aged men are more lia- ble than others. In the majority of cases, lock-jaw comes in conse- quence of stabs and punctures in tendinous parts, and about the fingers and toes, and this frequently when the wound heals kindly. Symptoms.—The muscles of the lower jaw become contracted and hard; at length the patient cannot open the mouth at all. A difficulty of swallowing succeeds, resembling hydrophobia. The muscles of the neck and back, and indeed of the whole body, become suc- cessively affected with violent spasms. The symptoms are sometimes rapid, at others slow in their progress. If the patient survives the fourth day, there is a chance of his recovery. The symptoms never recede but by slow decrees.