WATER AS A THERAPEUTICAL AGENT

Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889, by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. WATER AS A THERAPEUTICAL AGENT.

WATER AS A THERAPEUTICAL AGENT.

By F.C. Robinson, M.D.

My experience in the use of water in almost every disease occurring in this climate has long since satisfied me that it is less objectionable and produces quicker and better results than any other treatment, and can be used when all other medication is contra-indicated. Drinking water should be pure, uncontaminated by animal or vegetable impurities, and given ad libitum, unless, in rare instances, it should cause vomiting or interfere with the capability of digesting food. If children are comatose or delirious, as they frequently are in typhoid fever, give water to them regularly, or force it upon them, if they refuse to take it, as I was obliged to do with a child of six years just recovering from that fever.

It is my custom to allow cold drinks of water in all cases of measles whenever patients desire it, and I am satisfied that it aids the early appearance of the rash, and certainly is cooling and grateful to the patient. Hot drinks or vile and nauseous teas are unnecessary in this disease, and should be discarded as useless, odious, and disgusting. If congestion of the lungs or any intercurrent inflammation occurs, or the rash is much delayed, a hot water bath or the old reliable corn sweat will break up the complication with amazing rapidity, and if the head is kept cool, will not generally be unacceptable to the patient.

Hot baths reduce temperature by causing free perspiration afterward, and cold packs reduce it by cooling the surface sufficiently long to reduce the heat of the blood, and, if used judiciously, seldom fail of success. I have reduced the temperature four degrees in two hours by wrapping around a child a sheet wet with tepid water, and no other covering. Cold packs are sometimes objectionable, because of their depressing effects, and should only be used to reduce high temperature and when there is no congestion or inflammation of any of the vital organs of the body.

Cold water poured in a small stream from a pitcher upon the head for five or ten minutes will often relieve headache, and is a benefit in all inflammatory brain diseases, if, at the same time, you can put the feet into hot water containing mustard or pepper.

Large enemas of warm water will care for spasmodic colic, and I have, in one instance, relieved strangulated hernia by the same method, and at another time the same result was accomplished by a large injection of warm linseed oil. I have often applied a cloth wet with cold water upon the throats of children suffering with spasmodic croup, with satisfactory results.

I have seen infants suffering with diarrhea or summer complaint, sleepless, worrying, fretting, or crying from thirst, begging for water, and the mother or nurse afraid to give it more than a teaspoonful or two at a time, saying that it vomited everything it drank as soon as taken. I have often, when visiting such cases, called for a glass of cold water, and, to the surprise of the mother, would allow it to take all it could drink, which usually would be retained, and the child would soon be wrapped in a refreshing sleep. Without medicine, a proper regulation of the child's diet would soon restore it to health again.

The spasms of children, from whatever causes, or the eclampsia from uræmic poisoning, are often readily controlled when immersed in hot water or given a hot vapor bath or corn sweat. If the convulsions of children are accompanied by a high temperature, put them into water of 100° and then gradually cool it down to 68° or 70°, and then keep them in a room of the same temperature, with little covering. If the temperature rises, repeat the treatment as frequently as necessary, and I think you will not be disappointed in the results.

Scarlet fever and diphtheria, two of the most dreaded and formidable diseases of children, are largely shorn of their terrors when, in addition to an early and thorough medicinal treatment, the little patients are bathed in as warm water as the surface will allow frequently, or for thirty minutes wrapped in a warm, wet blanket, followed by warm, dry coverings, to maintain the perspiration that such treatment usually produces. It has proved to me a valuable aid in eliminating from the blood the specific poison which causes these diseases, and I can safely recommend it to your notice and trial.

There is no disease more favorably influenced by this treatment than pneumonia, and in mild cases one daily warm bath or sweat, without medicine, will be sufficient to arrest this disease, and it is among the first things I usually order. If I find a child or infant with a temperature of 103° to 105°, short, dry, and painful cough, dyspnœa, rapid pulse, great thirst, or vomiting, with dry crepitation in any part of the lung tissue, I order it rolled up in a blanket or sheet coming out of hot water, and in thirty minutes change it to warm, dry blankets, and soon the little fretful, worrying sufferer would rest in a quiet, peaceful sleep.—Peoria Med. Mo.

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