Facts establishing the efficacy of the opiate friction in spasmodic and febrile diseases. Also, outlines of an attempt to investigate the nature, causes, and method of cure, of hydrophobia and tetanus ... To which are added, cases and remarks / [Michael Ward].

  • Ward, Michael, active 1809.
Date:
[1809]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts establishing the efficacy of the opiate friction in spasmodic and febrile diseases. Also, outlines of an attempt to investigate the nature, causes, and method of cure, of hydrophobia and tetanus ... To which are added, cases and remarks / [Michael Ward]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of tetanus in consequence of wounds, * as in those from the application of cold.” First lines of the Practice of Physic. Vol. 3, p. 307. It will scarcely be credited, yet such is the fact, that after such unparalleled success in the treatment of tetanus by the cold affusion, as it was practised by Dr. Wright, and afterwards recommended by Dr. Cullen in the passage which I have just quoted, it should have fallen into an almost total disuse, for a period of near twenty years. This, I apprehend, has arisen, partly from the terms “ cold bathing ” and “ cold bath ” having been unfortunately sub- stituted for cold affusion, at the commencement of this practice, f which has occasioned these different methods of using cold water to be employed indiscriminately: and partly from me- dicines of various kinds having been exhibited [* Two of Dr. Wright’s cases of tetanus, the 2d. and 4-th. arose from external injury; and in the 6th. the patient was afflicted with the coccobia, or joint evil, which baffled all the art of medicine. “ It produced its usual and direful effects of destroying the fingers and toes. ” A few weeks previous to the attack “ his disease broke out with uncommon violence in the right foot, and seized the metatarsus, with most excruciating pains.” Three of the four cases quoted, above were also of the traumatic species of tetanus.'] [f I should rather have said at its revival by Dr. Wright, to whom it was suggested by Dr. Lind. From whom he had it does not appear; but Dr. Falconer has traced it as far back as the time of Hippocrates, who was evidently in the habit of employing the cold affusion. See Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, Vol. 2. Article 8.]