Nutrition for febrile patients

Know that the most suitable food for those suffering from fever is wet food, especially for children and for people living a quiet life, whose nature is wet. Such foods are suitable for them because they are similar to their nature and because they are the opposite of illness. If the patient has a fever and his nature is dry, then he is not fed at all until the feces are completely expelled. Periodic attacks or intensifying attacks should come to such patients when their insides are empty and there are absolutely no nutrients there, because if the patients are fed at such a time, then the digestion of food distracts nature from bringing the matter to maturity and expelling it, and the disease is strengthened and prolonged. Therefore, feeding should be delayed until the low period or longer, and if the low time happens to coincide with the usual feeding time, then this is the best thing that can happen.

Know that nutrition and food regimen can be very light or very coarse, and there is something in between, so that some food is more inclined to be rarefied, and some is more inclined to be dense. An extremely light regime is a complete prohibition of food, and a very rough regime is the use of food for healthy people. The regime leaning towards lightness and the average limits the diet to squeezed pomegranate juice and very thin julab, followed by liquid barley water, then thick barley water and cold, naturally moist vegetables, for example, quinoa, spinach, purslane and the like. Next comes barley gruel, as it is, and this is an average food. And the food is rather rough - chickens and animal limbs; rarer than them are field partridges and chickens, even rarer are mountain partridges and fish, even rarer are the wings, chicks and mountain partridges, as well as soft-boiled eggs in small quantities and very small fish. Even thinner is barley gruel, as it is, and even thinner is white bread, soaked until soft in cold water. As for roughage, these are various strong nutrients.

Barley gruel is an excellent food for those with a fever: it combines density and cohesion of particles with smoothness and slipperiness, the ability to cleanse and moisturize, softness and the property of resisting fever. Barley gruel soothes thirst, quickly passes down and is washed away; there is nothing astringent in it and therefore it does not settle and does not get stuck in the passages, even if they are narrow. It does not tend to stick to the esophagus as it passes through it, and it sometimes washes away, for example, mucus. If you cook it well, it doesn’t make you feel puffy at all.

Ancient doctors, if it was necessary to prescribe a mild regimen and something milder than barley gruel or barley water, sometimes used water sweetened with honey, and they poured a lot of water. The nutritional value of honey is then low, but the ability to conduct water, moisturize with it, cleanse, open blood vessels and drive urine is significant; The heat of honey is weakened, and it certainly, to a certain extent, although slightly, strengthens strength. Honey water is followed by honey shikanjubin. It is thicker and more nutritious, it removes juices more strongly and cleanses, and it does not have such heating and is not so harmful to the heated insides as pure honey. And now it is believed that cane honey, that is, sugar, especially refined sugar, is better than bee honey, although its cleansing property is less than that of honey. Sugar sikanjubin is also better than honey, but if you limit yourself to sikanjubin, it sometimes causes abrasions in the intestines, which are dangerous in acute diseases; We give special consideration to the intake of barley water and shikanjubin.

The nature of the pathogenic matter requires an easier diet; its purpose is to enable nature to bring matter to maturity, to dissolve it and expel it. The best time to ease the regime is the period of limit: here the nature, busy with the battle with matter, intensifies, and it should not be distracted from this by anything else, especially during a crisis, since before the crisis the battle is not yet so stubborn. Lightening the regime is also necessary, by the way, if there is a need to open the blood, let go of nature, do an enema or soothe the pain. Then you should finish fulfilling this need and only then feed, if feeding is necessary and there are no other obstacles.

And the purpose of a rougher food regimen is due to the weakness of natural strength. The best time for this is the time when the force is not very busy fighting matter, that is, the beginning of the disease. The harm from prescribing coarser food should be compensated by taking it in parts - this is more convenient for natural strength. In the summer, due to the greater absorption of food, it is necessary to increase nutrition and take food in parts, because natural strength is not enough to digest a lot at once; Since assimilation occurs in parts in the summer, then replacement of what has been assimilated must come in parts. In winter, the situation is the other way around: due to insignificant assimilation, abundant replacement is not required, and if the replacement is given at once, then the force is enough for this, and it ends with it at once.

Autumn is a bad time for someone with a fever, so in the fall one must manage to both preserve strength and overcome matter. It is best to eat food in parts, little by little, in the fall, and in general such fragmentation is more useful when you are weak.

Know that if it were not necessary to strengthen your strength, then the most necessary thing would be to lighten your diet to the extreme, but your strength cannot withstand this and falls. And when they fall, no treatment helps, for the healer, as you know, is a natural force, not a doctor, but a doctor is only a servant who provides the power with the tools of treatment. And since you imagine this, then you should look, and if the disease has become very aggravated - and this happens when the period of the limit is close - and you believe that the strength does not fall in the interval between the beginning and the limit of the disease, then make it easier for the force and give it power over matter without distracting it by digesting dense nutrient matter. On the contrary, lighten the regime until you completely stop eating, especially on the day of crisis. If you see that the disease is acute, but acute in general, and not very much, then you should not ease the regime to the extreme, except in the period of extremes and especially on the day of crisis, if there is no important reason for this. And if you see that the disease is protracted or close to protracted, then do not ease the regime: if the regime is eased, the strength will not be maintained until the period of the limit. Along with this, with all types of fever, it is imperative for you to prescribe a rougher regimen at first, and at the end, when the time approaches the limit period, a lighter regimen; in the interval you act gradually in order to conserve your strength until a time close to the limit, when you will send it against matter, without being distracted by anything else. If you know that your strength is great, then circumstances often allow you to limit your diet to julab or something similar for at least a week, especially during tumor fevers, and if you are afraid of weakening the patient, then limit yourself to barley water. If the situation is unclear for you and you do not know what the disease is, then, really, it is better to deviate towards easing the regime than to deviate towards increasing nutrition, taking into account, however, your state of strength and tolerance of this. And if anyone claims that nutrition and strengthening of strength in acute illnesses is preferable, since there is no point in waiting for matter to ripen, and emptying, if you want, is in your hands, whether nature has produced it or not, then we have already shown you that he is wrong. But really, if you are afraid of a loss of strength, then feeding is preferable.

Among people there are people with a bile corpus, for whom a different regime than we said is required, especially if they are accustomed to eating abundantly. If they are not fed even at the very beginning of the fever or in a more severe period, that is, in the period of limit, then one of two things will definitely happen to them: if they are weak, they will lose consciousness and soon die, and if they are strong, they will fall into wasting and they will show signs of stunting - the nose will become thin, the eyes will become sunken and the temples will be depressed. Sometimes they faint before this, as burning bile pours into their stomach. And there are also people whose bodies are rich in meat, but if they stop feeding them, they become weak, lose weight and cannot bear the loss of food.

Anyone whose innate warmth is very strong and abundant, or anyone whose innate warmth is very weak and meager, does not tolerate a cessation of nutrition. Some are affected by pain and cramping in the stomach and, as a result, a headache; These are people of the above category. Such patients are often content with barley water, but sometimes it needs to be mixed with squeezed pomegranate juice or something similar to strengthen the mouth of the stomach; Often you have to carefully induce vomiting in such patients before eating. When many of them weaken almost to the point of fainting, the reason is not severe weakness, but the outpouring of bile to the mouth of the stomach. If you give them sikanjubin, abundantly diluted with hot water, or wine, abundantly diluted with water, they vomit bile juices and their strength is restored, and when they are given some thickly brewed astringent juice, the vomiting calms down.

The old, the weak and children are classified as people who cannot stand hunger. As for mature men, they are very patient with him; they are followed by young men, especially young men with tightly knit limbs and wide vessels, staying in the cold air.

When treating such patients, doctors often make mistakes in another respect, namely: at first they do not allow the patients to eat, and when the disease reaches the limit period and they see that their strength is falling, then, of necessity, they feed them at this time and, thus, commit error. And if they had fed the patient at the beginning, thereby making a mistake and oversight, then it would have been a lesser mistake than the indicated mistake. It happens that such patients are struck by immature or bilious catarrh and insomnia from anxiety due to immature matter, and they worry, rush about and delirium. Matter compresses their forces and multiplies the pairs in them; they hear something that is not there, they toss and turn in bed, they imagine non-existent things, their lower lip trembles and twitches from pain in the mouth of the stomach, and they feel sad in their souls due to the heaviness in their stomach.