Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889.

Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 137 pages of information about Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889.
Keep the grass and weeds mowed around their pen and feeding places.  Mix slaked lime in the dust for them to take their dust bath in, and sprinkle the carbolic acid and water over and around their roosting pen.  Keep pails and kettles covered, for they will get drowned if they have half a chance, as they begin to fly so young.  Of course a turkey hen will take her young off, and care for them after a fashion, but the safest way to make them tame is to raise them where they may be cared for.  Even if the turkey hen hatches her last batch of eggs, it is a good plan to have a hen ready to take the little turkeys and slip them away at night.  If she still stays on her nest give her 20 or 25 hen’s eggs, and if she hatches them let her run with the chickens.  They are not so tender or so easily led astray as turkeys are, nor as valuable.—­Mrs. Jas. R. Hinds, in Orange Judd Farmer.

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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.

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Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.