Observations on cholera asiatica; its symptoms, mode of treatment, and prevention. With an appendix / Selected and arranged by Richard Phillips Jones.

  • Jones, Richard Phillips
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on cholera asiatica; its symptoms, mode of treatment, and prevention. With an appendix / Selected and arranged by Richard Phillips Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/108 (page 14)
    collapse had unequivocally declared the nature of the disease. Two other symptoms, of very frequent occurrence, remain to be mentioned, and which, in conjunction with those previously noticed, may be considered almost diagnostic. I allude to slight cramps affecting the fingers and toes, or .prevailing still more generally, and coming on during the night, and to a numbness and feeling of inability to move the limbs, approaching to paralysis: it is not a real inability, as a strong effort is sufficient to dispel the illusion; but the sensa- tion recurs, and it is fortunate for the patient if it create sufficient alarm to induce him to seek, without delay, medical assistance. In some instances, the diarrhoea h’as preceded the choleric stage by several days; but in others, by eight or ten hours only. Its mean duration, calculated from a number of tables, appears to be about forty-eight hours. In the premonitory stage of diarrhoea, the o})])ortunity most frequently occurs for the use of purgatives, and none has been yet found superior to rhubarb; of which, half a drachm, in powder, with five grains of ginger, and an ounce each of brandy and water, has the best effect, when the bowels yet retain a considerable quantity of fecu- lent matter; but if the major part of this has been evacuated, the strained effusion of the same quan- tity in two ounces of water, with a scruple of