Health abroad : a medical handbook of travel / by C. Harford Battersby [and others] ; edited by Edmund Hobhouse.
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Health abroad : a medical handbook of travel / by C. Harford Battersby [and others] ; edited by Edmund Hobhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.
212/400 page 192
![acquainted with the symptoms, but the malignant pustule can be recognised by the following description. It com- mences as a small painful red papule, occurring almost always on the face or hands, and often on the site of a mosquito bite or previous abrasion. The papule rapidly increases in size and is surrounded by a dark dusky red area that is considerably hardened and brawny. The patient will early feel feverish and probably have slight shivering attacks. On the summit of the red brawny swelling a black spot appears, surrounded by sundry little vesicles, about the size of the head of a pin, containing watery fluid, but no true pus or ‘ matter.’ If it be re- membered that there is no pus (matter) in a malignant pustule (so miscalled), there is little risk of a simple boil or pustule being mistaken for the malignant. If attacked by the latter a man’s life is in imminent danger until the pustule ])e freely destroyed without a minute’s loss of time. The gaucho realises this, and will unflinchingly allow the spot to be freely cauterised with a red-hot iron, and failing the surgeon’s knife there is no doubt that such cauterisa- tion is imperative, after which a pledget of lint soaked in a strong solution of carbolic acid (1 in 20 of water) should be kept for some hours in the wound. After extirpation of the site of infection the patient should be liberally fed and stimulated. As has been said, the risks of this disease for the casual traveller are remote, but the danger is so extreme that it has seemed well to direct the reader’s attention to the symptoms and to insist on the absolute necessity of imme- diate radical and heroic treatment.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28139355_0212.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
