Pestilence fever and what is similar to it, that is, fever with smallpox and measles

About pestilence fever. As we taught you in the Common Book, sometimes the same thing happens to air as happens to water: its qualities change in relation to warmth and coldness and its nature also changes, and it stagnates and rots, just as water stagnates, becomes fetid and rots. Just as water does not rot in a pure state, but rots due to the admixture of bad, earthy bodies that mix with it and create a bad quality in its entire composition, air also does not rot in a pure state, but due to the admixture of bad vapors that are with it. mix and create a bad quality in its entire composition. Often the cause of this is the wind, bringing bad smoke to healthy areas from distant areas where there are stagnant swamps or the decaying bodies of people who died in battles or from a murderous pestilence lie, not buried or burned, and sometimes the cause is close to the place or exists in himself. Sometimes putrefaction occurs underground for reasons, the particulars of which are invisible to us, and spreads to the water and air.

Fevers coming from dry air are less common than the same fevers coming from moist air, but in dry air yellow bile is more likely to form, and this also causes yellow gall fevers; As for pestilence fevers, they occur from foggy, humid air. In humid air, fevers are more frequent, but they are not as acute and last longer, while in dry, rainy summers they occur less frequently, but are more acute and pass sooner; the best time of year in this regard is when the weather remains as usual.

The source of all such changes are certain combinations of luminaries on the celestial sphere, which determine them in a way unknown to us, although some people consider it possible to make statements on this subject that are not based on evidence. You should know that the first remote cause of this is celestial figures, and the immediate cause is earthly circumstances. When the active celestial forces and the forces undergoing influence cause significant humidification of the air, they raise into the air and disperse vapors and smoke into it and fester them with weak warmth. Having acquired this quality, the air is delivered to the heart and spoils the nature of the pneuma, which is located in the heart. The liquid contained in the heart rots and a warmth is created that goes beyond the natural limits, which diverges in the body along its path and a pestilent fever arises, covering many people who also have the properties of a predisposition to such a fever. And if there is only one influencing force and the person receiving the influence is not prepared to perceive it, then the influence and perception are not carried out. The body is predisposed to what we are talking about when it is overflowing with bad juices; a pure body is almost not subject to this; people with weak bodies are also susceptible to this effect, for example, those who frequently copulate, as well as those whose bodies are moist, with wide pores, and who often use the bathhouse.

Signs. This fever is outwardly calm, but internally painful and, most often, destructive. You can feel a strong burning and burning sensation from it; your breathing is large, high, and frequent; it often shrinks and is often offensive. There is also intense thirst and dry tongue; sometimes fever is accompanied by nausea and loss of appetite, which destroy the patient if this is not counteracted by forceful feeding. The patient feels pain in the mouth of the stomach, there is an enlargement of the spleen, severe melancholy and anxiety. Sometimes there is a dry cough and a loss of strength and a state close to fainting, as well as clouding of mind, tension in the hypochondrium, insomnia, relaxation of the whole body and weakness; Often with this fever, pimples, yellow and red, appear, which sometimes quickly appear and quickly disappear, as well as kula and ulcers. The pulse is frequent and small in most cases; it intensifies most at night. Sometimes such patients fall into a state similar to dropsy, and they are weakened by bile and other juices. Their feces are soft, disgusting, unnatural; It is often black bile, but most often it is foamy and foul-smelling and contains particles of a kind of melting juice. The urine of such patients is watery, yellow-billed or black-billed; they often vomit black bile and produce foul-smelling perspiration. Such a fever begins with the mentioned phenomena in all their strength, and it comes to fainting, coldness of the extremities, lithargus, spasms and cusaz.

Among such pestilential fevers, there are sometimes those in which the patient or a loved one who is feeling him does not feel much heat, and the pulse and urine change slightly, but at the same time it quickly kills the patient, and doctors do not know what to do with it. Most of the patients with bad breath from these and those mentioned before die, because putrefaction takes hold in their hearts.

Signs of pestilence. Among the things that are equivalent to signs indicating pestilence is the multiplication of the number of heavenly stones and falling stars at the beginning of autumn and at Elul; they foretell pestilence, as some cause and frequent blowing on the eve of the south and east wind for several days in a row foretells it. Every time you see that the air is thick and hazy, and expect rain, but it turns out that the sky is dusty and dry and will not rain, know that the nature of winter is bad and there will be pestilence; As for the summer pestilence, so malignant and bad, it is indicated by the scarcity of rain in the spring in cold weather. Further, if you see that the south wind often blows and clouds the air for several days, and then, after that, the sky is clear for a week or more, and then it is cold at night, and hot, cloudy, foggy, and hot during the day, then pestilence has arrived and expect fevers - pestilence, smallpox and the like. Also, if the summer is not very hot, foggy and hazy at dawn, and earlier, in the fall, falling stars, heavenly lights and spears appeared, this is a sign of pestilence. Also, if you see that the weather changes many times during the day, and one day the sky is clear and the sun rises clear, and the next day it is clouded and rises as if in a shroud of dust, then consider that pestilence will happen.

As for the signs that seem to accompany the cause, then before the pestilence, for example, you see that there are many frogs, and you see that the insects born from rot have multiplied. One of the indications of pestilence is when you see that mice and animals living in the depths of the earth run out to the surface of the earth, stunned, and animals that are sensitive by nature, for example, storks and the like, flee from their nests and move away from them. Sometimes they even throw their eggs.

Treatment of pestilence fever. The totality of treatment methods for such patients consists of drying, and this is achieved through bloodletting and laxation. One should hurry up with emptying, and if the predominant matter is bloody, then the blood is let out, and if it is other juices, then they are removed. It is necessary to cool the rooms of patients and improve the air in them; They cool the rooms by surrounding them with naturally cold fruits and flowers and covering them with the ends of the branches of cold trees, and also use watering and sprinkling made from the juice of cold, fragrant fruits, camphor, rose water, and sandalwood. The patient's room is sprayed several times a day, preferably with rose water, willow and water lily juice; if there are sprinklers and water bottles for rose water in the room, then that’s even better. As for improving the air, we will talk about this shortly.

Such patients also use camphor cakes, thickly brewed cold juices, whey from raib, raib from which the cream has been skimmed, rose water in which good dried sour milk has been diluted, as well as vinegar and water. Cold water, drunk in large quantities at once, helps a lot, while drinking water in small quantities, in successive doses, sometimes induces fever.

If it has reached the point where the hypochondria become tense, the limbs become cold, and insomnia and mental darkness last, and you see that the patient’s chest and what is on the chest rises and falls, then you cannot do without Wrapping yourself in a blanket, which draws the heat outward. When appetite drops, patients are forced to eat. Most of those who dare and eat under compulsion begin to recover and survive; Therefore, it is necessary to force patients to eat. Food for them should be sour, drying foods and, moreover, in meager quantities, for foods also become bad in their body, and a large number of them cause harm due to their poor quality, and also cause harm due to overcrowding.

As for measures to improve the air, some of them apply to the healthy, and some to both the healthy and the sick. In relation to the healthy, their goal is to make the air dry and fragrant and in any way to prevent its decay. Improve the air with the help of raw aloe wood, ambergris, kundur incense, musk, sweet bush, mai, sandarak, asafoetida, clove resin, mastic, turpentine tree resin, dew incense, honey, saffron, sukkah, cypress, juniper tree, aushna, laurel, syti, aromatic rush, juniper berries, calamus, shabanak, bitter almonds, hoofed grass; sometimes complex combinations are made from these substances. The patient's room is sprayed with vinegar and asafoetida. Both healthy and sick people benefit from fumigation with sandalwood, camphor, pomegranate peels, myrrh, apples, quince, ebony, teakwood, tamarisk and rhubarb; these fumigations should be repeated.

Precautions against pestilence. It is necessary to remove excess fluids from the body and direct the regime to dry the body by all means, including poor nutrition, but not with the help of physical exercises: they should not be used, just like the bath or drinking medicine, and the patient should not must endure thirst. The air is improved by smoking, which we mentioned, and nutrition is provided by giving sour foods, and in small quantities. Meat consumed by such patients should be cooked in acidic substances; they should also eat jellies, carises and pickles prepared with vinegar or anything else, with sumac, with the juice of unripe grapes, lemon juice or pomegranate juice, and eat healthy vegetables in vinegar, especially capers in vinegar. Asafoetida is one of the medicines useful in such fevers; it drives away rottenness from people. Among the measures that relieve pestilence are the use of teryak and, before it, mithridate, subject to all the requirements of the correct regimen, as well as a medicine made from sabur, saffron and myrrh, which is taken daily about a dirham. It brings benefits.