MEDICAL HINTS. 
185 
impure water supply. The disease attacks people of all ages, but is less 
liable to attack white than coloured people. 
Incubation period, two to seven days. 
Symptoms .—The disease commences with lassitude, headache, giddi¬ 
ness, and shivering. The temperature rapidly runs up to 102° F., 
104° F. or even higher, and is usually accompanied with restlessness, 
sickness, and diarrhoea. The tongue becomes dry and brown, and 
there may be delirium; the pulse fails and the extremities become 
cold. 
After one or two days the glandular swellings commence in the 
armpits or groin. The glands may reach the size of a hen’s egg, and if 
the patient lives, break down and discharge matter. Boils and car¬ 
buncles may also occur during the progress of the disease. 
Death usually takes place before the sixth day, but in cases that recover 
convalescence usually commences by the tenth day. 
In one form of plague, inflammation of the lungs is the most charac¬ 
teristic sign. 
Treatment .—If possible, inject plague antitoxin ; if this is not available, 
give quinine, and treat the symptoms, such as thirst and high tempera¬ 
ture, by antipyrine, salicylate of soda, etc. Give stimulants for collapse, 
astringents or opium for diarrhoea, and sedatives for vomiting. 
Rheumatism. 
This is a disease which frequently follows exposure to damp and cold, 
and is on that account not uncommon in the tropics. It is often 
hereditary. After one attack, rheumatism is always liable to recur in 
the same individual, and on this account it is necessary that persons 
liable to the disease should use special precautions. 
Acute rheumatism. Symptoms .—This begins by a shivering fit, with 
rise of temperature and general sickness, and the joints, usually wrists, 
ankles, or knees, become painful, tender, and afterwards swollen. It 
resembles other feverish conditions in the rapid pulse and breathing, the 
constipation, scanty and high-coloured urine, etc., but it differs from 
most of them in the presence of a profuse and sour-smelling perspiration, 
resembling the odour of butter-milk. 
Treatment .—The best remedy for acute rheumatism is salicylate of 
