The antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera / by John Parkin.

  • John Parkin
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera / by John Parkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    planation offered of the cause. Had these writers taken the trouble to investigate the subject, and to analyse the facts, they would probably have been led to see the fallacy of their theory, and of the practice emanating from it. They might then, perhaps, have ceased to recommend the employment of agents which, in the hands of numerous practitioners, led only to failure, and to the loss of many valuable lives. Although the evidence thus adduced is only in- direct, it is perhaps more valuable, in some respects, than direct evidence. By the employment of these agents, what is termed a crucial experiment has been made—one that it would be impossible to make directly. For instance, we could not be so inhuman as to administer the gas to 10, 20, or 50 patients, and then leave the same number without any medicine, in order to ascertain what diiference there would be in the result. And yet, this is precisely what has been done, although unintentionally, by those who have adopted the two methods of treatment now under consideration. They have, in one case, administered remedies that had been proved to be useless, or worse than useless—the effect of which would be the same as though no medicine had been taken ; while, in other instances, they have given the same agents in combination with carbonic acid—the result, as a matter of course, being precisely the same as if the gas had been administered alone. By these experiments, another question has been