The pathology and treatment of Asiatic cholera, so called / by A.L. Cox.

  • Cox, Abm. L. (Abraham Lidden), 1800-1864
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology and treatment of Asiatic cholera, so called / by A.L. Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    13/87 page 4
    THE DIARRHCEA, ABSURDLY CALLED PREMONITORY SYMPTOMS. In every medical journal since, the unvarying testimony of all •writers corroborates this account of an attack of Cholera; and u]) to the year 1832 no author had taken any adequate notice of the diarrhoea, which is now known to precede the.se symptoms, until the attention of the profession and the' public was called to it by Dr. Kirk, a Scottish physician of great respectability, who, in his excellent essay, designated this particular feature of the disease as the premo- nitory symptoms. So inveterately fixed at that time upon the pub- he and 2:)rofessioual mind was the idea of the sudden and mysterious onset of the disease, that if Dr. Kirk had used a more correct desiw- nation than he did, it is more than probable he would not have been listened to at all. The immediate effect of his pamphlet on the Asiatic Cholera was to induce attention to that symjatom, and this was a great point gained in the observation of the disease. But it requires only a moment's reflection to see that this name is unphilo- sophical and incorrect. Conveying an idea more true than the %dew it superseded, it has yet contributed in no small degree to confuse the mind and retard its progress in the investigation of the nature and treatment of the epidemic. In a measure, indeed, it has perpetuated the very error which then prevailed on the subject. For if a symp- tom be i^resent, that symptom, being a delation from health, is disease. The disease is therefore present, and the symptom is not premonitory. To reflect a moment, then, no greater contradiction in language can exist than a premonitory symptom. If it is a symp- tom, where is the premonition ? It is the disease itself in its first symptom. The patient by this misnomer is induced, however, to think that he is not laboi'ing under the epidemic, but tliat he has about him some manifestation of approaching danger—a premoni- tion, a sort of physical prophecy of coming disease, but not the disease
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3