The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black.

Date:: 1909

Credit: The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

77/684 page 53

$one grain, ext. hyoscyam. one grain. This should be followed the next morning by a Seidlitz powder or a drachm or two of Epsom salts. No alcohol in any form should be taken. If the patient is willing to rest, to take no food whatever, to drink a couple of quarts of water or soda-water in the day, and to take the pill and saline draught advised above, a bilious attack in most cases passes off in twenty-four hours or less. Indeed by adopting the treatment when the attack is threatened and before it has actually developed, the more unpleasant symptoms may generally be avoided altogether. BINOCULAR VISION (Latin, from binus, “ double,” oeulus, “eye”). The simultaneous use of both eyes is called “ binocular vision,” and to secure its correct and full effect the eyes must have nearly the same acuteness of vision and degree of refraction, and the action of the external muscles must be so balanced that both eyes may be properly directed to the same object. There are, of course, two images formed of every object that we look at, one on each retina, and they are so combined by the brain as to give the impression of one object only, when they fall on what are called corresponding parts of the two retinae. The principal advantages of binocular vision are in the appreciation of the solidity (the “ three dimensions ”) of objects and in the accurate determination of distance. We are greatly as- sisted in the estimation’ of distances by the simultaneous use of both eyes, for each eye gives accuratel)r the direction of the object, and we know that its position must be at the intersection of these lines of direction. Persons who have lost one eye are much inconvenienced by the want of this assistance, as may be appreciated by attempting to thread a needle, or to touch a spot on paper with the point of a pencil quickly, with one eye closed. In looking at an object closely, the eyes are turned towards it, or con- verged, by the action of the internal straight muscles—another muscular effort involved in near vision, which is far from being the merely passive sensation that it is too often con- sidered to be. BIRTH OF CHILD, WHAT SHOULD BE DONE AT As it sometimes happens, especi- ally in the case of those who reside in the country, and at some distance from medical assistance, that the child is born before the doctor has had time to be sent for, it will be well for those who are in attendance to know how to act in the mean- while. It is desirable, therefore, to lay down a few plain rules for the guidance of those who may at any time be thus awkwardly sit- uated. As the head is being born, one of the attendants should place her left hand upon the patient's belly and grasp the womb. The object of this is that she may be able to follow it as it contracts and expels the child, and when the infant is born that she may keep hold of it until the arrival of the doctor, or, at any rate, till the after-birth has come away. Unless this simple precaution is attended to, the patient may suffer from flooding, and her life be endangered. When the head is born, one of the attendants should place her hand upon the child’s neck and feel if there be any coil of cord round it ; and if there be it ought to be loosened or it may be removed from the neck;$

The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black.

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