Out strikes, Pain

Papers on Health
by John Kirk

(Page 15 of 20)

The oiled cloth is wrapped all round the limb. Some dry cloth is also wrapped round, and the first treatment is completed. This should be repeated every night before going to bed, for a week at least. It may be required for a fortnight if the case is bad and no rest at all can be had during the day. We should say the cure may fail for want of this rest, but this is not likely. In the morning as soon as convenient, the diseased skin should be soaked with a warm vinegar cloth, so that it shall smart just a little. It should then be dressed again with the warm olive oil. If at any time during the day or night it gets irritated and troublesome, this morning dressing may be repeated. It will not be very long before the one leg is as good as the other. The general health, too, of the patient will be sensibly improved.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that a similar treatment to this will cure "out striking" of the same sort in the arms and other parts of the body, as well as upon the legs. There is required only some such modification of the appliances as may meet the particular case. For example, we have seen the out striking between the shoulders, so that it could not be reached by bathing, unless by appliances utterly out of the question in the circumstances. But dressing with hot vinegar cloths, allowing these to remain on for twenty minutes or so, and then dressing with warm olive oil, allowing this to remain for two or three hours, is quite possible to any one who is so affected; and this will usually be sufficient for a cure.

You have, perhaps, been cured temporarily more than once with arsenic, and the evil has returned worse and worse. In that case you may require all the more patience and the longer application of the above treatment; but, once cured in this way, you will not, so far as a good long experience enables us to judge, be likely to have any relapse. In very bad cases we have seen poultices of mashed potatoes made with buttermilk cleanse the diseased parts most effectually, and then the acid takes healing effect very speedily. In these cases ordinary medical treatment had utterly and hopelessly failed.

Pain, Severe, in Limbs - This is often not due to any trouble in the joint itself, but to some disorder in the large nerves which have their roots in the lower part of the back. In the case of severe pains in the back of the leg, ankle, or knee, when a chill to the large limb nerves has been the cause, and has raised inflammation, the patient should be put warm in bed. Take two large towels, thoroughly wrung out of cold water. Fold one six or eight ply thick. Gently press this, avoiding cold shock to the patient, over the lower part of the back. When this towel gets hot, spread it out to cool, and apply the other. Continue this with each towel alternately, and when finished, or after an hour, rub the skin with warm olive oil and cover up with new flannel. Similar cold applications to the upper part of the spine will cure such pains in the wrists. If the cold application intensifies or fails to relieve the pain, it is well to try the armchair fomentation.

Sometimes light pressure in the form of squeezing the muscles of the lower back is very useful. A very gentle pressure on the right parts is most pleasant to the sufferer. At first it simply relieves in some degree the weary feeling of the limbs. When it is at all well done, it soon raises a gentle heat, which slowly passes down the limbs, even to the very toes. This is just life itself communicated to the limb. But we must not confine our treatment to the spinal cord. The squeezing, or gentle pressure, must be carried down the limb; and when new life has been infused so far, it will be well to apply the pressure between the hands to the swollen and painful part. See Massage.

Palpitation - Ordinarily we are not aware of the beating of the heart, enormous as is the work it does; but in certain cases this beating becomes distressingly violent, especially on lying down flat or in ascending hills or stairs. The latter cases are the more serious, yet both kinds we have found quite curable. In treatment, fomentation must be avoided, and so must doses of the nerve-damaging drug, digitalis. The best way is to cool the heart, and thus relieve its superabundant action. But care must be taken that cold be not applied to a feeble heart, but only where action is evidently superabundant. It is usually easy to distinguish the two kinds of palpitation. The cooling can be done by pressing towels wrung out of cold water all over the heart region of the left side. Then rub the part so cooled with olive oil, dry off, and let the patient rest. This may be done in the morning before rising.

In cases where the heart is feeble, the following treatment should be carried out instead of the cold towels: - Begin at bedtime with a cloth covered with creamy soap lather, and placed quite warm all over the body of the patient. It should be fastened on with the body of a dress, or thin vest, so that it may be kept close to the skin during the night. In the morning the back should be gently washed with hot vinegar, dried, and gently rubbed with warm olive oil. In those cases where the palpitation is only part of a general nervousness, which causes great distress and sleeplessness at night, the back should be lathered all over with soap (see Lather and Soap) at bedtime, and the cloth with lather left on all night.

In the morning, dry off, rub gently with hot vinegar, and then with hot olive oil. If the palpitation resists this treatment, then cold towels should be gently pressed to the spine, until the whole system is quieted. The back should then be rubbed with warm olive oil. So far as this restless action is concerned, this is all that is required for complete cure. We are writing thus in view of cases declared hopeless, but the patients are now in perfect health. We remember one at this moment in which the heart's action was so bad that the head could not be raised from the pillow, but the person was in a few weeks as well as any one could wish to be.

No one who has not seen how readily the surplus vital action passes out of the system when simple cold is rightly applied, can imagine how easily such cases are cured. It seems to us absurd to speak of "heart disease" in many of the cases in which people talk of it and set the case down as hopeless. It is absurd, simply because it is not heart disease, but only a little more action than is comfortable, and which is reduced in a few minutes by a cold towel. No doubt care and willingness to work a little are required, if one would relieve a sufferer in such a case as this, but that care and energy are sure to have the best of all rewards.

Palpitation often arises from indigestion, in which case See Indigestion.

Palsy - See Paralysis.

Printed by Hurst Bros., Shaw Heath, Stockport. 1904.