Report on the progress of practical medicine, in ... midwifery and the diseases of women and children : during the years 1844-5 / by C. West.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the progress of practical medicine, in ... midwifery and the diseases of women and children : during the years 1844-5 / by C. West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    other instances of the occurrence of erysipelas after vaccination. F. de Wuerst, in his dissertation De erysipelate Neonatorum post Vaccinationem, Dorpat, 1835, 8vo, mentions twenty cases, and gives references to several recorded by different writers. In none of Wuerst's cases, however, did gangrene occur; the children dying as from ordinary erysipelas.] DYSCRASIjE, etc. Scrofula. The first part of a treatise on scrofula has appeared from the pen of M, Lugol.* The influence of hereditary predisposition in giving rise to the disease is treated of most fully, and amply illustrated from M.Lugol’s large experience. It may be doubted, however, whether due weight is attached to the other causes of this disease. M. Negriert has published a second ac¬ count of his experiments on the treatment of scrofula by walnut tree leaves. He states that of the 55 persons treated by this remedy, whose cases he men¬ tioned in his first Report, 34 continue radically cured, and he considers the results of his second series of experiments as fully confirmatory of his former opinion. The action of the remedy is very slow, its use for from 20 to 50 days being requisite before any effect becomes apparent, and its employment seems to have been continued in some instances for 6 or 8 months. He states, how¬ ever, that relapses are very rare. It acts most slowly in scrofulous swellings of the glands, but very rapidly on diseased bones, or ulcerated surfaces, or in strumous ophthalmia, in which a decoction of the leaves employed as a colly- rium is extremely serviceable. Rickets. M. TrousseauJ strongly advocates the use of the oleum jecoris aselli, which he gives in doses of 9j to 3iij daily, mixed with sugar or syrup. He looks for some obvious improvement in 8 or 10 days, and for cure in the course of a month or six weeks. He insists much on the observance of a milk diet, and on abstinence from meat during the treatment, and disapproves of all orthopedic proceedings for straightening the limbs. Cretinism. Much interest has been excited by Dr. GuggenbiihPs phi¬ lanthropic efforts to cure this distressing malady. His first Report§ has been published, in which he makes some observations on the affection, and describes his mode of treatment. The period of liability to cretinism extends from dentition to the 7th year. Its curability is greatest during the first two years of its existence, and appears afterwards to be in direct relation to the power of speech. Idiocy and cretinism are by no means synonymous terms, and cre¬ tinism does not depend simply on want of cerebral development. A morbid condition of the system generally, allied to struma or rickets is the foundation of the disease, to which the decay of the intellect is superadded. Defective cerebral development is often associated with cretinism, and one remarkable case is related in which the head of a child aged two years and a half, which had measured 15 inches round at the time of its reception into the institution, gained 2^ inches in circumference during a sojourn of 30 months upon the Abendberg. The hospital is siluated at a height of3000 feet, in the midst of the Bernese Alps, between the lake of Thun and Brienne. Most of the patients are children under 1 year old. Dr. Guggenbiihl’s first aim is to improve their physical condition. For this purpose he uses daily bathing in water, impregnated by means of an electro-magnetic apparatus. The oleum jecoris aselli, iodide of iron, and quinine are the chief medicines employed. Much importance is at¬ tached to keeping the children in the open air. Goat’s milk is much used as an article of diet. Great caution is observed in proceeding to the mental educa¬ tion of the patients; and the education of the senses is that which is first at¬ tempted A pictorial grammar by Czech is much used in teaching the ele¬ ments of speech. * Recherches surles causes des Maladies Scrofuleuses; Paris, 1844, 8vo. An English translation has been published by Dr. Ranking. f Archives G6n. de M6d. Fev. 1844. t Journal de Mddecine, and Journal f. Kinderkr. Marz 1845. § L’Abendberg, ^tablissement pour la guerison et l’education des enfans cretins, 8vo ; Fribourg, 1044. t C. and J. Adlard, Printers, Bartholomew Close.