FEVER. 



193 



is always slow and dubious, relapses are feared, 

 and for six weeks there is little change for the 

 better ; the stomach is liable to severe indiges- 

 tion ; the body is emaciated, and the appetite is 

 excessive, or sickly and uncertain. The patient 

 suffers from toothaches and swelled face, catarrh, 

 hepatitis, emesis, and vertigo, with alternations of 

 costiveness and the reverse. As I have already 

 said, change of air and scene is at this stage 

 more beneficial than all the tonics and prevent- 

 ives in the pharmacopoeia. Often a patient 

 lying apparently on his death-bed recovers on 

 hearing that a ship has arrived, and after a few 

 days on board he feels well. 



Diarrhoea and dysentery are mostly sporadic ; 

 the former, however, has at times attacked 

 simultaneously almost every European on the 

 Island. It is generally the result of drinking 

 bad water or sour wine, of eating acescent or 

 unripe fruit, and of imprudent exposure. Dy- 

 sentery is especially fatal during the damp and 

 rainy weather. It was often imprudently treated 

 with mere astringents, and without due regard 

 to the periods of remission, and to the low form 

 which inevitably accompanies it. As in remit- 

 tents, the patient was weakened, and his stomach 

 was deranged, with 1 slops,' when essence of 



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