MILK AS A DIET IN DYSENTERY AND TYPHOID FEVER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3665, 13 April 1883, Page 4

MILK AS A DIET IN DYSENTERY AND TYPHOID FEVER.

DrAV. AY. Tow.iseiid, of Philadelphia, publishes the following letter in the Scientific American of December 2nd : " I notice iv your paper of the 14th of October an article taken from tho statements of Dr Beui. Clark and Dr Alexander Yatc in favor of the use of milk as a diet in dysentery and typhoid fever. They give no dates as to Avhcn they commenced to use it. lam iioav in my seventy-fifth year, and have witnessed several epidemics of dysentery, typhoid, scarlet, and relapsing fevers, small-pox, measles, etc., and have used milk in every case coming under my care for nearly forty years in eA-ery stage of the disease. I will not say it is a cure, for I do not believe in the so-called "cures" aud specifics. Milk is the natural food of all mammalians. It not only sustains life, but promotes the groAvth of every part of the system. _ No other article contains till those ingredients. It is the recuperative power of nature that performs the cure, and he who studies lioav to assist it by sustaining the system is the best physician, and milk is one of the best agents that can be used. In dysentery I prefer fresh butter-milk, and all the patient wants is perfect rest, and discard all irritating cathartics and purgatives. Mercury iv any of its 2'repa.rations is poison in dysentery or scarlet fever, and the physicians Avho gives them Avill neA-er be veiy successful. If his patient recoA-ers it Avill bo despite his treatment. I Avill add that in smallpox .and scarlet fever I anoint the patient from head to foot Avith olive oil by means of a badger brush, and repeat as often as it disappears, thereby allaying the heat, keeping opan the pores of the "skin, producing quietude, preventing congestion of the capillary circulation, and obviating the necessity of anodynes. I have practised the greasing for thirty-five years, aud Avas sneered tit by my medicttl brethren for it find the milk treatment. Now, I believe, it is in general use with the best results."