A treatise on epidemic cholera and allied diseases / by A.B. Palmer.

  • Alonzo Benjamin Palmer
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on epidemic cholera and allied diseases / by A.B. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and later stages ; and Specific Cholera, from its peculiar, identical character, and its presumed dependence upon a particular, specific, material poison, as its cause. Admitting the origin of the word to be from the Greek, X'^-rj, bile, as most assert, the term cholera is an evident mis- nomer, since a flow of bile does not occur in the disease ; but, on the contrary, there is a marked deficiency, and as the disease approaches its acme, there is an abnormal ab- sence of bile in the pale, watery discharges. But if the word be derived from z^fia> a gutter or water-spout, there is an evident appropriateness in the application of the term, from the pouring forth of the discharges as from a water-spout. But etymological consistency is not universal in medical nomenclature. Hisiory.—In a work like the present, intended to be specially practical, and which must be comparatively brief the full details of the prevalence of this affection cannot be entered upon ; neither can all the speculative opinions respecting it be given ; and only so ranch of its literature can be referred to as shall present the most rational and best siistained views of its nature, its causes, its prevention, and its treatment. In attempting to give an outline of the history of Cholera, if Ave go back of the year 1817, we encounter the difficulty of not being able to ascertain whether the disease described is the same as that now known as Specific Cholera. That a disease called cholera, which prevailed sometimes in an epidemic and often in a very severe form, was known to Hippocrates 400 years B. C, is shown by Dr. John Mac- pherson, of London, in a recent edition of his work on Annals of Cholera from the earliest period to the year 1817 ; and the same view is taken by Dr. John C. Peters,