_Take oatmeal, or pounded biscuit, a couple of spoonfuls; water,
a quart; a small handful of raisins; a little allspice, a little
mace, tied up in a fine rag; which boil together in a tin
saucepan till consumed to a pint and a half; then add a gill of
good wine, red or white, and sweeten it with sugar to suit the
palate. You may put a little lemon peel in, to give it an
agreeable flavour._
A little roasted fresh meat will hurt nobody; and broths most certainly
are good, particularly if the body is costive; but when the body is
inclined to looseness, I have known the best broth to produce a
dangerous flux; and this should be taken notice of.
If the patient however who has met with the accident is of a puny weak
constitution, or has lost a sufficient quantity of blood by the wounds,
bleeding then is not so requisite as in the former case; though the
treatment otherwise must be equally the same.
By this method of proceeding, there is little fear but that the patient
will soon perfectly recover, even in the highest fever that may suddenly
befall a man from an accident; provided the injury is not of a dangerous
tendency. But as an acrimonious habit of body is liable on its own
accord to diseases, it is easily imagined that an accident may become
accessory, and heighten the malignity; hence often a fever of that kind
is liable to degenerate into a malignant one, or even from the accident
itself, when of a dangerous nature; and this I shall explain as I
proceed. I shall therefore leave the accidental fever that proceeds from
an external cause, and proceed to those which take their origin
internally.
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