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.

    25/290 (page 19)
    treatment, adapted only to particular cases and par- ticular localities, have been recommended as capable of curing the disease under every variety of form, and in all its various stages. And what has been the result of this ? Others, without reflection, and led away by their reputed success, have followed the same methods under different circumstances, and with an opposite result. As an example, I may mention the opposite results that have been obtained by blood-letting. In India, where this remedial agent was first resorted to, and where it was employed to the greatest extent, the success attending the operation was certainly such as to merit the encomiums bestowed upon it, by most of the writers of that period. But, then, what was the type of the disease in these instances ?—that of sudden and immediate collapse. Here then was a case, where abstraction of blood, by removing the great plethora of the venous system, and restoring in some measure the balance of the circulation, might be a powerful means, by producing a determination of blood to other parts, of removing the poison from the internal organs, and distributing it to less vital parts. But, what was the result of the practice in other instances, when venesection was resorted to in the stage of col- lapse, which had been preceded by premonitory diarrhoea of several days' duration, and by the profuse serous evacuations in the second stage of the disease; and when it was impossible to do more than empty the c 2