Health Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 May 1884, Page 5

Health Notes.

TREATMENT OF BURNS. What is wanted as a dressing for burns is something which will preserve the skin and hold it intadl until the new one has formed ; that is, usually less than one week. After experimenting with a large number of substances, I am convinced that there is nothing equal to what I have recommended several times, and which I here repeat—the covering of the burn with the mixture of equal parts of the white of egg and sweet oil thoroughly beaten together. If the skin is broken or displaced, it should be carefully brought to its original position, and if there is vesication, the serum should be removed by puncturing with a fine needle and applying gentle pressure ; then the parts should be freely covered with this mixture, which forms a kind of paste, and, to give greater security, strips of fine muslin or gauze may be laid over the wound. This should not be removed till the new cuticle has fully formed and become sufficiently firm to bear exposure to the air. If further vesication takes place under the dressing, the serum should again be removed, as also only pus, if it should form, and then more of the dressing should be applied. If, through motion or other cause, the wound becomes exposed—and daily care is required to avoid this—more of the

mixture should be promptly applied. The dressing should completely cover and even extend beyond the part injured, and generally by the third day the edges may be trimmed off with scissors, and by from the sixth to the tenth day the whole dressing can be removed, leaving a perfectly formed cuticle without blemish or scar. I can speak with great confidence of this treatment, for, after an experience of more than twenty years with it, in a large number of cases, I have never been disappointed in its results.—Dr. I. T. Talbot, in N. E. Medical Gazette.

HOT MILK AS A RESTORATIVE. Milk that is heated to much above ioo° Fahr. loses, for the time, a degree of its sweetness and density ; but no one fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind who has ever experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage as hot as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its having been rendered somesvhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portions seem to be digested and appropriated almost immediately; and many who fancy that they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by labor of brain or body, will find in this simple draught an equivalent that will be as abundantly satisfying and more enduring in its effects. —Louisville Medical News.