The ship captain's medical guide / compiled by Harry Leach.

  • Leach, Harry.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ship captain's medical guide / compiled by Harry Leach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the bowels have acted well, give them a dose of salts and nitrate of potash, with essence of ginger, twice a day, and, if the pain continue, put on their stomachs a large hot fomentation, repeating this until the pain abates. This treatment, with entire absence from all work in ivhich lead is used, must be con- tinued until the bowels are regular and the patient free from pain, or palsy of the hands may follow, and the men will then be entirely useless to you for the rest of the voyage. KIDNEY DISEASES. These maladies are difficult to detect, and their symptoms by no means easy to describe. Pain in the loins, great general depression, and (as with heart disease) great general dropsy, are the chief and only marked signs. If the patient be tolerably strong, keep the bowels very freely open for fourteen days by giving a dose of cream of tartar, in a little water, every other morning. Should the swelling not be reduced, or the pain relieved, by this treatment, you can do nothing more to aid strength except by feeding the man tolerably well. Heart and kidney affections are the most hopeless kinds of internal diseases, and in the vast majority of cases your patients will be fit for no more active work than sailmaking, cleaning brass-work, quarter- master's duty, or giving a hand to the cook.
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