804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



her mouth to hers, blew in as much breath as she possibly could, and 

 in a very short time the exhausted lady awakened as out of a deep 

 slumber, when, proper things being given her, she soon recovered. 

 The maid being asked how she came to think of this expedient, said 

 she had once seen it practiced by a midwife with the happiest effect." 



A little stream of water falling from a height on the face and 

 neck, the irritation of the olfactory nerves by means of snuff or pun- 

 gent smells (burned pepper, etc.), the motion of a rumbling cart, have 

 now and then sufficed to restore suspended animation. Persons sub- 

 ject to fainting-fits can use no better prophylactic than gymnastics in 

 winter, and cold baths and pedestrian excursions in summer-time. 



Febrile Affections. In all disorders of a malarial and typhoid 

 character, as well as in scarlet fever, measles, small-pox, and epidemic 

 erysipelas, refrigeration * is more efficacious than any medicine. In 

 several zymotic diseases, besides cholera and yellow fever, the action 

 of antiseptic drugs is annulled by the inversion of the digestive proc- 

 ess : the chyle is forced back upon the stomach, and, mingled with the 

 red corpuscles of the disintegrated blood, is voided in that discharge 

 of cruor known as the black-vomit. Bleeding, instead of reducing the 

 virulence of the fever, is apt to exhaust the little remaining strength 

 of the patient. Lord Byron, for instance, was bled to death as surely 

 as if the surgeon had cut his throat. 



Gout. A paroxysm of this dread penalty of idleness and intem- 

 perance is preceded by certain characteristic symptoms lassitude, 

 eructations, a dull headache, involuntary tears, a shivering sensation 

 about the groins and thighs. If the lassitude has not yet taken the 

 form of an unconquerable lethargy, the patient may obviate the crisis 

 of his affection by severe and unremitting physical exercise, a prophy- 

 lactic which, though doubly grievous in a debilitated condition, is in- 

 comparably preferable to the hellish alternative. I knew an old army 

 officer who kept a spade in his bedroom, and, at the slightest premoni- 

 tory symptoms, fell to work upon a sandy hill-side, and once dug a deep 

 trench of forty-five feet in a single night, and toward morning stag- 

 gered to his quarters and had barely time to reach his bed before he 

 sank down in a deliquium of exhaustion, and awakened late in the 

 afternoon as from a fainting-fit, with sore knees and sorer hands, but 

 without a trace of the gout from which his compact with the powers of 

 darkness proved to have respited him for a full month. The racking 

 pain can be somewhat relieved by such counter-irritants as blisters, 

 violent friction with hot flannel, etc., or actual cautery and the topical 

 application of opiates. The experiments of sixteen carnivorous and 

 alcohol-drinking nations have revealed dozens of similar palliatives, 

 but only two radical remedies frugality and persistent exercise. 



Headache. Chronic headache is generally a symptom of dis- 

 ordered digestion. To attempt the suppression of the effect while the 



* " Climatic Fevers," " Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxiii, p. 477. 



