In cerebral and cerebro-spinal meningitis hot-water bags to the head and spine will be found far better practice than the habit of freezing the patient to death with ice-packs and ice-bags. Chronic dyspeptics who suffer from eructations, furred tongue, bad breath, bad taste in the mouth, constipation of the bowels, scanty urine, may be greatly benefited by drinking a large goblet or two of hot water on an empty stomach at early rising and at bedtime. The water may be acidulated with fresh lemon juice. In very obstinate cases of this kind much may be gained by systematic hot fomentations over the epigastrium for two hours at, say, from 7 to 9 P.M., the applications being renewed every twenty minutes.
A good hearty sip of hot water should be taken with each renewal of the compress. This plan of hot-water drinking on a n empty stomach with the evening fomentations should be continued every evening from two to four weeks, according to the needs and obstinacy of the case. I remember very distinctly getting this plan and idea some thirty years or more ago from a book on Water Cure, by an English author, Dr. Gully who enjoyed much celebrity and practice at the time. It is very remarkable how much hot water may be taken on an empty stomach, with little or no inconvenience to the individual.
In cool or cold weather it pours away through the kidneys and bladder; in hot weather it finds additional outlet through the skin in the form of perspiration, bringing a peculiar sense of cleanliness and bodily renovation, with improved secretions and excretions everywhere. I have come to attach importance to the lemon acid addition to the water, as rendering the water more palatable, and, besides, exerting a good influence on the stomach and other organs which it may reach. I usually prescribe the juice from half a fresh lemon to a point of water. Should so much juice put the “teeth on edge,” the quantity must be reduced or taken less frequently.
The whole range of poultices and poulticing, whether in domestic or professional practice, would seem to depend for efficacy upon the heat and moisture contained. Every old mother or nurse knows full well that the poultice cases to do good when it gets cold. In mastitis, peritonitis, pneumonitis, pleuritis, and the whole family of furuncles, the good to be derived from the time-honored “mushpoultice” is attributable to the heat and moisture in the application. A flannel out of hot water might do just as well, except that it loses its heat and moisture too soon, necessitating the trouble of too frequent reapplication.
I remember very distinctly a case of infantile pneumonia which I had visited and prescribed for daily for a period of ten days or more without success. When I came to make my morning call I was agreeably surprised to find the child bright and almost well, fro being quite ill at my last visit. The mother told me in a sort of beg-pardon, apologist manner, that she had applied a poultice to the patient’s chest the night before. By the way, the best material of all others, for a poultice, is flax-seed meal. It retains heat and moisture well, and has oil enough to prevent adhesion to the skin surface.
We come not to speak of a most valuable use of moist heat in the management of the various uterine disorders. The use of this agent in the domain of gynaecology does not seems to have received any special, systematic attention until within the last ten or fifteen years. Now, it is the fad of the hour, and, like many other good things in the hands of indiscreet zealots, has received some misuse in the house of its friends. Many a poor woman is to-day being soused, drenched and irrigated, beyond all reason and propriety, at the hands of those without wisdom or discretion. The abuse to which a misdirected zeal has brought it, is only an argument or fact that there is much in it for good as well as misuse.
To-day, if I should be offered the alternative to give up very other known form of local application, or accept hot water, as my only resource in such cases. I should unhesitatingly adopt the hot-water treatment as against everything else n the local line. Not that I underrate other agencies and modes, but this much by way of indicating the importance I attach to the agent I am now commending. I have now arrived at the point in my daily professional experience where I may say that I begin the treatment of every case of sexual disorder in the female with hot water irrigations. These are prescribed for morning and evening observances, from one-half gallon to one gallon being used at each application, from a fountain syringe. In every obstinate cases I add the use of the hot sitz-bath for ten minutes every twenty-four hours.
If there be constipation of the bowels the colon should be filled with hot water, once in the twenty-four hours, to be retained as long as possible, jointly for help to both constipation as well as the uterine disorder. The colon full of hot water for the time acts much as a poultice might in behalf of the sick uterus and its appendages. In the adoption of this mode I do not stop at nice distinctions as to whether the case be one of cervicitis, endometritis, perimetritis, ovaritis, uterine displacement, or sub-involution. In most cases of long standing, several, or al of these conditions, exist. Each and all are benefited by the treatment. Usually this mode of treatment embraces and exhausts its opportunities in from two to four weeks.
Protraction beyond this probable limit will not only be useless but may prove a source of defeat or even draw-back. Any powerful agent in the treatment of disease has its limit as to usefulness, beyond which an adverse result may be expected. I beg you to indulge a slight digression while I say in most cases I conjoin the glycerole cotton tampon with the hot water, and with great seeming advantage. Indeed, I sometimes find myself almost at the conclusion that these two agencies are well nigh equal to the relief of any and every form of sexual disorder peculiar to the female. In this sweeping declaration, of course I provide exception for the demands of surgery in case lacerations, abnormal growths and malignant troubles.
As a haemostatic, hot water has come to be a valuable resource n violent haemorrhages, especially when from one of the bodily cavities, as the stomach, the bladder, the uterus, or the intestines. In such cases it should be used just as hot as will not endanger tissue integrity, and in bold, large quantities, thrown in forcefully with a syringe in a continues stream, until some effect shall seem to have been reached. It is noteworthy that in cases where the hot water may seem a failure, the other extreme of cold water will almost surely succeed. The alternation of hot and cold water will almost surely succeed. The alternation of hot and cold water in bad uterine haemorrhages is sometimes of the very first moment.
As a disinfectant and general renovator about the sick room, it would be hard to overestimate the value of steam and hot water. They have absolutely all the elements of success- cheapness, efficiency, promptness, harmlessness. We are decidedly of the opinion that entirely too much attention has been given to loudly vaunted proprietary compounds, as disinfectants, to the neglect of the two valuable agents we commend.
We believe all parties are now quite agreed that no germ, real or supposed, and no toxic effluvium emanating from the sick body, can maintain identity and integrity under the action of water at 212 degree or steam at a higher degree. All toxic or germ activity is not only killed, but killed, neutralized, and washed away. There is no way so effective for renovating a sick chamber and all its belongings or contents as by the free use of steam and boiling water. An advantage under the steam and water regime is, that tapestries, clothing, etc., are not the worse, but rather the better, generally for future use if desired.
