Page 189 - My FlipBook

INDICATIONS OF THE TONGUE. 187

quickly. External heat is often beneficial, such as the warm
bath, hot water bottles or bags. Artificial respiration may also
be resorted to in extreme cases, or galvanism—the Faradic cur-
rent to stimulate the diaphragm, applied with one pole over the
phrenic nerve, the other over the diaphragm. Small chips of ice,
made by standing the piece with the grain upright, and splitting
off a thin edge with the point of a pin, if the patient can swal-
low them whole, will allay nausea and vomiting : also, if the
patient can swallow, twenty drops of aromatic spirits of am-
monia in a little water may be given every two or three minutes,
until four or five doses have been taken. Smelling salts (am-
monia), or cologne on a handkerchief may be of service in mild
cases.
Fainting- Syncope.—Persons may often faint without any per-
ceptible cause, but debility of the nervous system favors it ; or
it may occur from the sight of blood. In nervous patients
fainting may occur after severe hemorrhage, etc. The symptoms
are expressionless face, pallor of skin, lips, and oral mucous mem-
brane, coldness of surface of body, irregular respiration, breath-
ing being irregular in rate and depth, dilated pupils, mental
apathy, loss of voluntary muscle-movement, and occasionally
nausea and vomiting.
Treatment.—The patient should be placed in such a position
that the head will be lower than the body : if sitting in a chair
she should not be removed but the chair lowered backwards, the
head being supported, until the floor is reached. This backward
and downward movement is readily made in a dental chair by
lowering the movable back. Usually the consciousness returns
as soon as the head of the patient is lowered. The dress should
be loosened about the neck and chest. For an adult, a teaspoon-
ful of brandy in a little water, or twenty drops of aromatic spirits
of ammonia in water, may be given at short intervals, until
consciousness and restored action of the heart occurs.
CHARACTERISTIC INDICATIONS OF THE TONGUE.
The tongue, when in a normal condition, should be freely
movable, of a pink color, and the dorsum marked in the centre