An experimental inquiry into the physiological action, the poisonous properties, and the therapeutic effects of the hydrocyanic acid / by Henry Lonsdale.

  • Henry Lonsdale
Date:
[1839]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An experimental inquiry into the physiological action, the poisonous properties, and the therapeutic effects of the hydrocyanic acid / by Henry Lonsdale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recommended its employment in those diseases can hardly find a parallel in the history of medicine. Brugnatelli recommended the acid so early as the year 1807, in angina, tubercular cough, catarrh, &c.*and Borda, Brera, and Heineken*f* have used it very generally in pectoral complaints. Magendie, who has perhaps in¬ vestigated the therapeutical action of the prussic acidmoreffhan any physician in France, states it to be useful in the great'number of cases of the nervous and chronic cough affecting females. In some cases where opium seriously incommoded the patient, and where no rest had been obtained for several days, the prussic acid calmed the cough in a few hours. Encouraged by this success, Magendie made repeated trials of the medicine in phthisis, and he states, that he found it “ diminish the intensity and frequency of the cough, moderate and facilitate the expectoration, and in fine procure sleep without exciting the colliquative sweats.” M. Lerminier, at the suggestion of Magendie, administered the acid in one-twentieth of the cases of phthisis admitted into the Hospital La Charite with great relief to the cough expectoration and watch¬ fulness. Magendie seems fully confident of the curative effects of the medicine in the first degree of phthisis pulmonalis. J The Italian professors, according to Manzonfs thesis, have laud¬ ed the acid in every disease of the respiratory organs. Dr A. T. Thomson thinks the prussic acid valuable as a palliative in the early stages of phthisis, by “ diminishing the hardness and frequency of the cough, and lessening the general hectic tendency.” § Dr Nancrede of Philadelphia, || Dr Kergaradec of Paris, and Dr Frisch of Nyborg,** confirm Magendie's statements. Dr Gran¬ ville has devoted no less than a hundred pages of his treatise to cases of phthisis treated by himself and others, and seems to think that recovery may be expected even at an advanced period of the disease, if the acid be employed. It is well to remember, that at the time these reports of c< incipient” and “ confirmed” consump¬ tive cases were drawn up, the stethoscope was almost unknown in this country, and must have been entirely so to Dr Granville, as may be seen by referring to the 206th page of his work It need hardly be remarked, that severe catarrhal affections of long stand¬ ing induce very unfavourable symptoms, which might easily be confounded with phthisis. Some authors are less sanguine of the utility of the prussic acid in phthisis, amongst whom is Dr Elliotson, who has frequently * Granville’s Treatise, &c. p. 123. t Nouveau, Journ. de Med. Aout 1821. + Magendie’s Memoire, passim. § Cyclop. Pract. Med. he. eit. 1J Philadelphia Journal, May 1821, or Lond. Med. and Phys. Journ. Vol. xlvi. qj Magendie’s Memoire, p. 59. ** Ibid. p. 92.
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