328 THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES. 



The preventive treatment of headache consists chiefly in avoiding those conditions 

 which are known to predispose to or excite a paroxysm. Many people who suffer 

 from headache, tremors, and restless nights, derive benefit from giving up tea. 

 Coffee is not equally injurious, and in some forms of headache it undoubtedly often 

 does good. Tobacco, too, is, as a rule, not beneficial when there is a tendency to 

 headache, but in some instances a mild cigar appears to ease or even dispel the pain. 

 When a sufferer from nervous headache awakes in the morning with those un- 

 mistakable symptoms that usher in a day of pain, he would do well to forego his 

 accustomed cold bath, for his standard of health is obviously low, and no reaction 

 will follow the application of cold. 



HEART DISEASES OF THE HEART. 



There are throe great causes of heart disease. Either it is congenital, or it is 

 the result of rheumatic fever, or it is due to degeneration. We remember a great 

 medical teacher used to say " If you have not heart disease now, and don't get 

 rheumatic fever, you are safe till you are over fifty." Children are sometimes born 

 with malformation of the heart, but their lives are short, and those cases need hardly 

 enter into our consideration. In this country rheumatic fever is the most common 

 cause of heart disease. Thanks to our changeable climate rheumatic fever is a very 

 prevalent complaint, and its great danger is that it may affect the heart. Many a 

 man has suffered from years of misery as the result of an apparently slight attack of 

 rheumatism of which at the time he probably thought little. In children, rheumatic 

 fever is very apt to be overlooked, especially when the joints are but slightly affected, 

 and the whole brunt of the attack falls upon the heart. Sometimes heart disease 

 comes on after scarlet fever, but these cases are exceptional. In athletes, gymnasts, 

 labourers, and those who have heavy weights to lift, heart disease is not uncommonly 

 the result of a severe strain. In these cases the onset is often very sudden, the patient 

 perhaps at the moment suffering from severe pain and shortness of breath, and he 

 may even experience a sensation of something having given way in his chest. 



We have, so far, spoken of heart disease as a whole, but it must be remembered 

 tnat there are many different kinds of heart disease. These varieties are perfectly 

 distinct, but they can be distinguished only by a skilled examination of the chest by 

 a medical man, and it is impossible for us to lay down any rules for their recognition. 



Among the general symptoms of heart disease may be enumerated, pain in the 

 chest, palpitation, blueness of the face and lips, difficulty in breathing, cough, dropsy, 

 and an irregular pulse. It must be distinctly understood that it is the combination 

 of these symptoms that -would lead us to suspect heart disease ; and that the presence 

 of only one or two would mean nothing. Pain in the left side is a symptom from 

 which most of us suffer at some time or other, but it alone is not to be regarded as 

 indicating the existence of heart affection. In the majority of cases it is purely 

 muscular in origin, resulting from general debility and over-exertion. Weak, ill-fed, 

 badly-nourished, sickly women, exhausted by frequent pregnancies and long-continued 

 suckling, often suffer from it terribly, and their general debility often gives rise to 

 palpitation of the heart, but there is no actual disease, and the proof of this is that it is 



