will hail them as demigods wherever
they go. But their patients are generally cripples who want to be made
whole in a moment, and other suchlike impracticable cases. Powerful
emetics, purgatives, and eyewashes are the most popular physickings.
The traveller who is sick away from help, may console himself with the
proverb, that "though there is a great difference between a good
physician and a bad one, there is very little between a good one and none
at all."
Drugs and Instruments.--Outfit of Medicines,--A traveller, unless he be a
professed physician, has no object in taking a large assortment of drugs.
He wants a few powders, ready prepared; which a physician, who knows the
diseases of the country in which he is about to travel, will prescribe
for him. Those in general use are as follows:--
1. Emetic, mild; 2. ditto, very powerful, for poison (sulphate of zinc,
also used as an eye-wash in Ophthalmia). e. Aperient, mild; 4. ditto,
powerful. 5. Cordial for diarrhoea. 6. Quinine for ague. 7. Sudorific
(Dover's powder). 8. Chlorodyne. 9. Camphor. 10. Carbolic acid.
In addition to these powders, the traveller will want Warburg's
fever-drops; glycerine or cold cream; mustard-paper for blistering;
heartburn lozenges; lint; a small roll of diachylon; lunar-caustic, in a
proper holder, to touch old sores with, and for snake-bites; a scalpel
and a blunt-pointed bistoury, with which to open abcesses (the blades of
these should be waxed, to keep them from rust); a good pair of forceps,
to pull out thorns; a couple of needles, to sew up gashes; waxed thread,
or better, silver wire. A mild effervescing aperient, like Moxon's is
very convenient. Seidlitz-powders are perhaps a little too strong for
frequent use in a tropical climate.
How to carry Medicines.--The medicines should be kept in zinc pill-boxes
with a few letters punched both on their tops and bottoms, to indicate
what they contain, as Emet., Astr. etc. It is more important that the
bottoms of the boxes should be labelled than their tops; because when two
of them have been opened at the same time, it often happens that the tops
run a risk of being changed.
It will save continual trouble with weights and scales, if the powders be
so diluted with flour, that one Measureful of each shall be a full
average dose for an adult; and if the measure to which they are adopted
be cylindrical, and of such a size as just to admit a common lead-pencil,
and of a determined leng
|