A Poultice (p. 18, Vol. II.) may be employed instead of the fomentation. It would be made of bread, or bran, or linseed-meal, and char coal might be added if the surface was raw and foul, or the water with which the poultice is mixed might contain carbolic acid (a tea spoonful to pint of water), or lysol (15 drops to pint of water), or boric acid (i oz. to the pint).
Inflammations of Internal Parts are treated on essentially similar principles, but it is not so easy to apply the detail or to explain it in a general way. But the general directions given for the treatment of external parts are equally applicable here. These general direc tions were to remove, if possible, the cause of the inflammation, to keep the part at rest, and to raise it. Now, in the case of inflammations of internal organs, the discovery of the cause is often the most difficult task of medicine or surgery, but the sufferer will often have a lair enough guess at some likely reason for his attack. At least he ought to know whether his indulgence in eating or drinking or some variety of excess is related to his attack, whether his catarrhal inflammation of stomach or bowel, his gouty affection of kidney or throat, his rheumatic or gouty inflammation of joint has followed on some excess he can identify. The
removal of the cause in such cases means absti nence from excess of every kind.
It means also emptying stomach and bowel of offending material and cleansing the blood of excessive waste substances. See the dis cussion, from this point of view, on p. 49.
Rest as applied to hand or foot most people understand, but as applied to stomach or heart or kidney few appreciate what it implies. In the case of the stomach it means the reduction of food to the smallest possible amount, of the simplest kind ; in the case of the kidney it means giving such food as will give the least trouble to the kidney in expelling its waste substances ; in the case of the heart it means placing the body in such a position as will enable the circulation to be carried on with the greatest ease, and avoiding everything that would quicken its rate by a single beat per minute.
This, put shortly, means rest in bed, in the position most suitable to the particular organ attacked.