MILK, AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS.
Early in my practice as a physician I had a patient, a little girl, who,
after having been sick for many weeks with a fever, seemed at length to
become stationary. She was not weak or sick enough to die, and yet she
seemed not strong enough to recover. Her vitality was almost exhausted,
and yet Nature was loth to give up.
On this young patient, during her long sickness, I had tried a thousand
things, to see if I could not give Nature a "start;" but all to no
purpose. The wheels would not move. She would either vomit up every
thing I gave her, or it would pass away as into a reservoir, unchanged.
There appeared to be, I repeat, no vital action in the system.
To check the vomiting or prevent it, I had tried various measures, both
external and internal. I had used warm applications to her stomach, both
dry and moist. I had tried frictions of the skin and fomentations of the
abdomen, both simple and medicated. Electricity I believe I had not
used. Cheerful conversation, music to some extent, and the society of
pleasant faces had all been invoked. Still there she was, on her bed. It
seemed next to impossible for her "chariot" to go either backward or
forward.
One day she asked for some milk. In an instant I determined to try it.
So I took a teaspoonful of this fluid, warm from the animal, and gave it
to her, only requiring her to swallow it very slowly. She not only
obeyed me, but appeared to relish it. Nor was there any nausea
afterward, nor any evidence of evil effects or evil tendencies.
At the end of four hours, I gave her another teaspoonful of milk, in the
same way and with similar effects. At the end of four hours more,
another was given; and thus onward. In twenty-four hours I was able to
increase, slightly, the dose. All this while there was no stomach
sickness, in the smallest degree. In three or four days, she could bear
a table-spoonful of the "new medicine," every four hours, or a quantity
equal to two or three ounces a day. In a week or ten days, she could
take nearly half a gill at once, and had gained considerable strength.
She recovered in the end, though her recovery was very slow.
But I had hardly used the milk three days, before I began to be
denounced as an almost insane man, especially by those who were wont to
set themselves up as the arbiters of public opinion, and who lived too
remotely to witness the good effects of the course I was pursuing. The
family, of course, though they disapproved of what I did, could say
nothing against it, especially as it afforded the only ground of hope of
recovery. The whole public mind, in that region, was affected by the
belief that milk, in a fever, is heating and dangerous. "What a strange
thing it is," said many an old woman, and not a few young ones, "that
the doctor should give milk to a person sick with a fever! He will
certainly kill the girl before he is through with her. If these young
doctors are determined to make experiments, they ought surely to make
them on themselves, and not on their patients."
The public complaint involved one serious mistake, else it would have
had the semblance of reason to justify it. As a general fact, milk is
heating in a fever, and is consequently inadmissible. The mistake to
which I allude consisted in the belief that the fever still existed,
when it had wholly passed away and left nothing behind it but debility,
or the consequences of the fever.
But the evidence that milk did not hurt her, lay, after all, in the
indisputable fact that she improved as soon as she began to use it, and
under its moderate and judicious exhibition entirely recovered her
health. Observe, however, that I do not say it cured her; although I
might make this affirmation with as much confidence as can justly exist
with regard to any thing belonging to the _materia medica_. All I say
is, that after having hung in suspense for some time, neither growing
better nor appearing likely to do so, she commenced the use of the milk
as aforesaid; and almost as soon as she began to use it she began to be
convalescent, and her improvement went on steadily, till it terminated
in sound health.
And yet our good friends, up and down the country, who uttered so many
jeremiades about the folly of giving milk to a little girl in a fever,
lived to witness her complete recovery, notwithstanding. She is now a
mother in our New England Israel, and I believe a very healthy one.
Whether I would venture to pursue exactly the same course in the same
circumstances, were I to live my life over again, is not quite certain.
And yet I certainly think it not only safe, but desirable in such cases,
to do something. Why, I have occasionally, in circumstances of
convalescence from fever, given things which, in themselves considered,
are much more objectionable than a little milk, and with the most
perfect success. I have even given pork, cabbage, cheese, and beans. It
is true, I have been compelled to exercise a good deal of care in these
cases, with regard to quantity. That which in the quantity of half a
pound might destroy life, might in the quantity of half an ounce, be the
one thing needful to the salvation, physically, of a valuable member of
society.
A man in New Haven County, in Connecticut, some fifty years ago, was for
a long time suspended, as it were, between this world and the next, in
consequence of being left in great debility after a long and dangerous
fever. For several weeks, in fact, it was scarcely guessed, except in
the softest whisper, whether the slightest movement or change in his
system might not precipitate him at once into the eternal world. In this
perilous condition, he one day asked for sweet cider, just from the
press. His attendants very properly and naturally hesitated; but the
physician, when he arrived and was made acquainted with his request,
immediately said, "Yes; give him a teaspoonful of good, clean, sweet
cider, every two hours." The cider was given, according to the
commandment, and appeared to have a restorative effect. The man
recovered in a reasonable time, and is, I believe, alive to this day.