Remarks on the report furnished by Asst. Surgeon E. Hare of his treatment of fever and dysentery during the time he was attached to the general hospital, Calcutta, in 1849-50.

  • Hare, Edward
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the report furnished by Asst. Surgeon E. Hare of his treatment of fever and dysentery during the time he was attached to the general hospital, Calcutta, in 1849-50. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    allow them. But in dysentery where they used no substi- tute, the result has been, that the mortality is double, and thus nave we gone on dreaming and dozing, and priding a ourselves on our superiority to the old race of calomel Doctors, as we call them, without ever taking the trouble to see what tne statistical results really are, of the do-nothing-system we n nave adopted. But of late years great progress has been made. Doctor Marshall Hall, besides his magnificent discoveries in the nervous system, the light, as they are of modern days, has done *' greater things for actual practice, than even these. He has proved that the congestion of blood in internal organs, which Dr. Johnson witnessed, is not inflammation, and so little allied to it that a patient almost bled to death, is the very subject in which it is sure to occur, in its most marked form, and he has proved by infallible* experiment, that the cure for this, is not further depletion, which always before him was adopted, but stimulants and opium, with the best nourishment the stomach will bear. Now it is somewhat disgraceful, I must confess, that this, perhaps the most important discovery of the last century, because it is so practicable, nevertheless seems quite neglected in this country, and to my great astonishment I found, on joining my present Regiment, the treatment recorded there of my predecessor, who to relieve spasms of the stomach to which he was liable, had opened both veins with his own hand. He fainted and fell down in the night on the floor, and was found nearly dead in the morning. He rallied, however, and when re-action took place, and congestions of various organs, he was treated with repeated doses of calomel and colocynth and leeches, and after the patient's death, this gentleman recorded the case, as if he were well satisfied with the treatment, with his own hand, in the Hospital Case Book. * All this has since been fully confirmed by every writer, Orfila, Christison, &c, on Toxicology and Medical Jurisprudence. And now, except the effusion ofcoagu- lable. lymph be evident, no extent of venous vascularity or congestion, is allowed in our Courts of Law, as proof of inflammation. Blushing is a familiar illustration of temporary congestion. The same flushing of the face and irregular action of the circulation, heats and chills, occur after severe depiction, only in greater degree.
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