Volume 3

The genuine works of Hippocrates / translated from the Greek with a preliminary discourse and annotations by Francis Adams ... In two volumes.

  • Hippocrates.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The genuine works of Hippocrates / translated from the Greek with a preliminary discourse and annotations by Francis Adams ... In two volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    464/504 (page 444)
    as was done by the army and hospital surgeons of this country during the late war.' Whether or not this was a defect in ancient practice I shall not take it upon me to offer an opinion. Suffice it to say, that there is undoubted evidence that im in- juries of the head the ancient surgeon, as is naively recom- mended by Avicenna, “bled his patient when he stood in need of being bled ;”? that is to say, according to special indications, and not in obedience to any general rule.” There is another point of practice in injuries of the head to which it is proper that I should draw attention—I mean cold applications. Now it is beyond a doubt that the application of cold in diseases of the brain is pointedly condemned by Hippocrates, and that he used hot applications instead ;* and, moreover, that most of the ancient authorities adhered to his rule on this point. At the same time it would appear, that in extreme cases certain of them did not scruple to apply ice to the shaved head.’ I shall only remark further, that in this case, as in diseases of the eyes, perhaps the safest rule is, to be guided very much by the feelings and habits of the patient. ! Sir Astley Cooper mentions an instance in which 208 ounces of blood were abstracted from a patient!! In Quesnay’s Memoir there is nothing more common than to find it reported that he had bled a patient three or four times in the course of a day. In one case 160 ounces were taken in nine days; “ but,” it is gravely, added, ‘‘ two years elapsed before she was quite wel! again.” PLY, by B51. 3 The principles upon which depletion by bleeding and purging should be regu- lated are fully stated and discussed by Galen, in the Fourth Book of his great work on Therapeutics. The rule is briefly given by Hippocrates in his Second Aphorism : ‘‘respect being paid to place, season, age, and the diseases in which it is proper or not.” 4 See Aphor. v, 18, 22; and § 12 of this treatise. The professional authorities of the present day are not agreed as to the expediency of using poultices or cold lotions in injuries of the scalp. Guthrie and Hennen recommend the latter; but South, in the edition of Chelius, prefers the former. ° This is related of Philagrius in a very interesting scholium on the Aphorism just quoted. See Scholia in Hippocrat. et Galen., tom. ii, p. 457; ed. Dietz. [The Plates referred to will be found at the end of the work. ]