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HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
Alcoholic and other excesses render people peculiarly liable to contract 
the disease. Dysentery may complicate or be complicated by malaria. 
Symptoms .—Diarrhoea with pains in the belly, straining and frequent 
desire to go to stool. The motions soon become small in amount, slimy, 
lose their natural colour, and contain more or less blood; when there is 
ulceration of the coats of the bowel, the motions are extremely offensive, 
and bleeding may be very free. There is heat, tenderness, and bearing 
down about the outlet of the bowel, with considerable prostration and 
probably some fever; there is frequently a constant desire to pass water. 
All these symptoms may be due to severe ordinary diarrhoea ; but in the 
tropics it is best to treat them as if they were dysenteric. 
Treatment of dysentery: 
Essentials: rest, warmth, and suitable food. 
Put patient to bed, apply a cholera-belt, and give a gentle purgative if 
the case is seen early. Take the temperature; if it is not high, give 
five grains of quinine twice a day; if high, give ten grains twice a day. 
Diet .—Give as little food as possible during" the early stages of the 
disease. Milk, or, better still, milk diluted with an equal quantity of 
barley- or rice-water, and just warmed, may be administered one table¬ 
spoonful at a time. Beaten-up eggs, and soups thickened with arrow- 
root, sago, or tapioca, may also be used. 
The further treatment of the case consists in the administration of 
ipecacuanha, magnesium sulphate, or calomel. Ipecacuanha or sulphate 
of magnesia should be tried first, but if after a week the patient is no 
better, treatment by calomel must be adopted. 
The object of treatment is not to block up the bowel—as might be done 
by giving large doses of opium or tannin—it is to cure the disease of 
which the looseness is only one symptom. The most favourable sign during 
an attack is a return of the colouring matter to the motions; this shows 
that the liver is again acting, and that the treatment is doing good. With 
the return of colour (which at first may be intermittent), the other 
symptoms, such as pain and bloody discharge, will abate, and .the motions 
will become more solid and healthy. 
In dysentery, as in severe diarrhoea, the patient should not be allowed 
to get up to stool. A box cut across obliquely will make a rough slipper 
bed-pan; put sand in it, and pad the edges. The dysenteric motions 
must be burned or thoroughly disinfected. 
