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Treatment (As a total retention of urine)

As a total retention of urine is always attended with considerable danger, there should be no delay in endeavoring to remove it.

The first step is to place the patient immediately in the warm bath. While he is there a laxative and anodyne clyster must be got ready, which is to be given as soon as he leaves it, and soon repeated. In the mean time the warm fomentations and bladder of hot water must be kept applied, and the mixture below be taken every three or four hours. If there be any difficulty in procuring it, twenty drops of laudanum in a little warm barley or rice-water, or a decoction of the dandelion, will answer instead. Warm sweet oil or milk and water may be injected up the urethra, and three or four grains of camphor, in a little milk, be taken every hour.

If no relief is obtained by these means, leech the perineum, apply snow or ice to the bladder, or make the patient stand on a cold brick or stone pavement, and dash cold water over his thighs, and, if this fail, try the tobacco clyster, which sometimes succeeds after everything else has been resorted to in vain. If a catheter can be procured, try gently to pass it into the bladder while in the bath. If the patient himself cannot do it, let a handy friend attempt it; if foiled in one position, try another. Success is of the utmost importance, for there is nothing but an operation, in the event of its not being obtained, that can save life.

In every case of retention of urine the order of remedies then is: the warm bath, laxatives and anodyne clysters, fomentations or bladders half filled with warm water over the lower belly, camphor and milk every hour or every three hours, the testicle.

Treatment. Cutting out or crushing the stone Diabetes, or an Immoderate Flow of Urine.

Symptoms. Frequent discharges of large quantities of urine, which is sometimes of a sweet taste; skin dry, bowels costive, appetite voracious, weakness, and gradual emaciation of the whole body. Treatment. The principal remedy for the cure of this disease consists in confining the patient to a diet composed almost exclusively of animal food.

Blisters may, also, be applied over the kidneys, and kept open with the savin ointment. The prescription below has proved sometimes successful. The carbonate of ammonia, in doses of 11 or 12 grains three times a day, is strongly recommended, upon high authority. In addition to these, opium in liberal doses, exercise on horseback, the fleshbrush, and flannel next the skin, are not to be neglected. The bowels should be kept open by rhubarb.