Desultory notes on the origin, uses, and effects of ardent spirit / by a physician.

Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Desultory notes on the origin, uses, and effects of ardent spirit / by a physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    56/134
    92 stomach would interfere with the fermentative process, but it is after severe fatigue and travel that such depravation takes place. We have extracted from the first number of the Register and Library of Medical and Chirurgical Science, a notice of some cases of delirium tremens, the peculiar description of derangement which has usually been thought distinctive of the effects of intoxication from the use of ardent spirit.— Dr. James Johnson the distinguished editor of the Medico Chirurgical Review, in a late discussion at the Westminster Medical Society, related to the society four cases of delirium tremens which had lately come under his observation, the subjects of which had not been guilty of the slightest degree of intemperance in drinking. The patients were young ladies, residing at a country boarding school. The symptoms were sleeplessness, (one of them had not slept for eight nights.) spectral illusions, ferrety eyes, cold clammy skin, con- stant jactitation, &x. &c. indeed, he observed that he never saw the symptoms of delirium tremens more marked and complete in the cases of drunkards. In three of the cases the ladies had remained at school during the holiday recess, a long way from home and their parents, for the purpose of devoting that portion of time to study, to remedy the defects of a neglected education. They had laboured most assiduously; and the delirium commenced immediately on the return of the other pupils at the commencement of a new session. On visiting the cases he attempted to produce relief by the exhibition of opium, but that only aggravated the disease. Cold to the head, soothing treatment, and moderate nourishment, were adopted with success. Now and then intemperance appears in an intermittent form, after the lapse of weeks, months, and even years : and this type is the one in which its peculiarities, as a disease, are most distinguishable. Too often we see it continued—and it may be symptomatic of, or depend- ent upon, the influence of other physical or mental infirmities.! The causes which induce the disposition to use ardent spirit, and the character of the disease of drunkenness, must be distinctly consi- dered—for we believe, that the effects can only be successfully en- countered by treating it as a disease. We must not blindly combine and generalise the various conditions, character, and stages of the causes, or of the disease, of drunkenness, in the different forms they assume in different individuals. We must distinguish both causes and effects, as we are wont to do in other cases, according to individual predisposition and personal peculiarity.;]; The mental resolves which intemperate people sometimes make * Cattle, after eating largely of wet clover, become often swollen to such a de- gree by the disengagement of gases, that unless relieved by stabbing or a stomach tube they speedily die under the effectsof this imprudentyeecrmg. t Mr. Earle, in his account of the New Zealanders, describes their general disgust for spirituous liquors; but in certain instances, in which there was a wasting away from something like consumption, in females, who had previous- ly enjoyed perfect health, he observes, they eagerly asked him for wine. i Dr. Fleming remarks: The lower animals have their curiosity confined to effects; man alone attempts to investigate causes. Phil, of Zoology, i. 258, In reasoning, we must consider in all cases the mode of action, or we only mystify and obstruct enquiry, and have no real knowledge. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,