And Remember That You
Must Give Up Cold Water, Boiled Or Unboiled, Altogether; For If You
Take The Boiled Or
Filtered water and put it into one of those
water-coolers, and leave it hanging exposed to night air or
Day on
the verandah, you might just as well save yourself the trouble of
boiling it at all.
Next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them. Let the
new-comer remember, in dealing with quinine, calomel, arsenic, and
spirits, that they are not castor sugar nor he a glass bottle, but
let him use them all - the two first fairly frequently - not waiting
for an attack of fever and then ladling them into himself with a
spoon. The third, arsenic - a drug much thought of by the French,
who hold that if you establish an arsenic cachexia you do not get a
malarial one - should not be taken except under a doctor's orders.
Spirit is undoubtedly extremely valuable when, from causes beyond
your control, you have got a chill. Remember always your life hangs
on quinine, and that it is most important to keep the system
sensitive to it, which you do not do if you keep on pouring in heavy
doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf into the bargain.
I have known people take sixty grains of quinine in a day for a
bilious attack and turn it into a disease they only got through by
the skin of their teeth; but the prophylactic action of quinine is
its great one, as it only has power over malarial microbes at a
certain state of their development, - the fully matured microbe it
does not affect to any great degree - and therefore by taking it when
in a malarious district, say, in a dose of five grams a day, you
keep down the malaria which you are bound, even with every care, to
get into your system. When you have got very chilled or over-tired,
take an extra five grains with a little wine or spirit at any time,
and when you know, by reason of aching head and limbs and a
sensation of a stream of cold water down your back and an awful
temper, that you are in for a fever, send for a doctor if you can.
If, as generally happens, there is no doctor near to send for, take
a compound calomel and colocynth pill, fifteen grains of quinine and
a grain of opium, and go to bed wrapped up in the best blanket
available. When safely there take lashings of hot tea or, what is
better, a hot drink made from fresh lime-juice, strong and without
sugar - fresh limes are almost always to be had - if not, bottled
lime-juice does well. Then, in the hot stage, don't go fanning
about, nor in the perspiring stage, for if you get a chill then you
may turn a mild dose of fever into a fatal one. If, however, you
keep conscientiously rolled in your blanket until the perspiring
stage is well over, and stay in bed till the next morning, the
chances are you will be all right, though a little shaky about the
legs.
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