The weekly Ottumwa courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1857-1872, 1865-08-24
DIARRHEA.

This word means, literally, running
thr0ttgh," as applied to the human body,
in connection with diseased condition, its
excessiveness is easily seen. Whatever a
person eats or drinks seems to pass through
the system very soon, and with compara-
lively little change.
Simple diarrhea is the passing from the
bowels of a watery, lightish colored sub
stance, in considerable quantities, at sew
eral times during the "A hours, sometimes
with pain, always leaving sense ofweak-
ness misunderstanding deliciousness, as
there would be no occasion ever TO get up
again.
If blood is passed instead ofa thin, light
colored liquid, it is then Dysentery or
"Bloody Flux," accompanied with a fire.
qusnt desire to stool, without being able to
pass anything, with sensation so distress
ing that the I%tins called it Tormina, liter
ally torment" If on the other hand,
the discharges are frequent, imperative
and in immense quantities, thin as water
almost, and ofa lightish color. without
any pain whatever; that is genuine cholera
-Asiatic cholera. 1t is quite sufficient for
all common practical purposes, to say that
diarrhea, dysentery, and Asiatic cholera
are one and the same disease, differing on
ly in intensity. Diarrhsa is watery
looserssss, dyssntsry is q bloody loossness,
cholera is an immense watery looseness.
In diarrhsa there is not much pain, nec-
essarily. In dysentery there is great
deal ofpain, inevitably. In cholera, there
is never any at all rs to the bowels. In di-
arrhea discharges always succeed inclina-
ton. In dysentery, there Is a most dis
tressing inclination, with no satisfactory,
no relieving discharge.
In cholera, desire is followed by immense
and relieving discharges. In all these,
there il one nevsr-failing circumstance al
ways and invariably present, and never
can be absent, under any conceivable cir
cumstances-it il the qusnchless instinct
of nature calling for absolute rest, bodily
quietude, and without that rest cure is
always impossible, and death an ihevita-
BILE event. ~
There is in all these remorseless thirst.
Nature then calls for two things, to satisfy
her longings for rest and drink, and il
these two things are done tcith sufficient
pron,ptness, there is a perfect cure in nine
cases out often. Perfsct quietude on bed
and chewing ice, swallowing as large
pieces as possible, until the thirst is per-
fectly satisfied, is all that is necessary in
any ordinary attack of either ofthsse three
diseases. Tomake assurance doubly sure
keep the abdomen tightly bouad around
| with two ttsiek aesses. of woelen flannel
eating nothing but boiled rice, with boiled
milk in ordinary cases; in more violent
cases let the rice be parched black as coffee
usually is, then toil aud eat it, or what j,
still more efficient, put n pound or two o
-four in a linen bag, boil it two hours il
milk, take off the skin, dry it, CRATE it int,
boiled milk, and eat it freely, and nothing
else, until the disease Is checked. II th'
bowel complaints are checked too prompt
ly with laudanunl, paregoric, or opium
fatal commissions take place in a few hours
a. to children, and incurabls congestion o
in6,mation of the brain in grown persons
AZ bowel diseases are the scourge OF nj
armies in the fall Of the year, these sugSes
tions should he widely circulated.-[ HaLr
Journal Of Heatth-