Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/154

 I believe many of the light attacks of fever which come upon one so suddenly, could be avoided if hot and cold baths and these packs were more resorted to at the time when the fever is first felt coming on. After a long ride, or any severe exertion, nothing restores one more quickly than a hot bath just before bed time and a pack, next morning you awake quite refreshed. I have known severe cases of neuralgia yield to the following treatment:—I may mention that the patient had come off a six months droving trip, through weeks of heavy rains, floods, and general misery, he was so crippled with rheumatism that he had to be lifted from his horse and helped into the house; there was no doctor within 45 miles, so my remedy for neuralgia was had recourse to on the principle that it couldn't kill, and if it would do no good it would do no harm—they first gave him a vapour bath (improvised with cane chair, a bucket of hot water, and a few red hot bricks), one teaspoonful of flowers of sulphur internally, and put him into a pack and to bed, lastly a cup of hot milk with about two tablespoonsful of rum in it. He slept for four or five hours that night which was more than he had done for a week he said. Next day he was given another vapour bath, another spoonful of sulphur, and as much hot milk as he could take, for diet nothing but slops (as he politely termed them), consisting of soup with plenty of celery and other vegetables in it, also celery boiled in rice water, and administered as medicine every hour or two a tablespoonful at a time. He was packed again that night, and next morning another spoonful of sulphur, and the same diet, with hot milk to drink as before. He was much better by this time but was still kept in bed, that night he was dosed with pills of some sort to carry off the effects of the sulphur, and, by the end of ten days, he was perfectly free from neuralgia, rheumatism, or any other 'ism, and as far as I know he has never been troubled with them again. Directly he feels twinges of his enemy he flys [sic] to sulphur and vapour baths at once.

To improvise a vapour bath, place an ordinary cane chair over a bucket of hot water, let the patient be seated on the chair and a blanket be wrapped entirely round and over him, head and all if he can bear it, wrap another blanket round to cover in the bucket. Have three or four bricks in the fire, and when very hot place first one, and as that cools then the other in the bucket. The steam will be very hot but the patient must try and bear it. Sulphur can be added to the water, if a sulphur bath is desired.

Most women require a rest in the middle of the day, and are the better for it. Particularly do they require it in warm climates. Between 1.30 o'clock and 2.30 is the best hour to take, and if it is done regularly you will soon find that you cannot do without it