Letters on the cholera / by Whitelaw Ainslie.

  • Whitelaw Ainslie
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on the cholera / by Whitelaw Ainslie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/48 (page 14)
    the strongest reasons that could be urged for the existence of acidity in the stomach on such occa- sions, I contend, is the almost instantaneous cessa- tion of the vomiting after the admiaistration of a full dose of calcined magnesia. Now, was a catarrh of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels the immediate cause of the violent discharge upwards and downwards, it must follow that the antacid is a cure for such catarrh, which is not the case, as it can only act in any instance by correct- ing an acid principle. But independently of elec- tricity being injurious by its direct effects in pro- ducing this principle, we know well what harm it can do, and does do, by its influence purely on the nervous system. Has not Adelon said, in his Dic- tionnaire de Medecine,*— La frequence de cette maladie-f- coincide, dans notres climats temperas, avec r^tat electrique de I'atmosphere ; and has not J. P. Grant, Esq. expressed himself thus in his Official Papers on the Medical Statistics of Malacca and Penang? all I can conjecture with regard to the cause of Cholera is that it may depend on a peculiar state of the electric fluid operating on the nervous system; a notion quite in unison with Forster, who has, in his work already cited, by many curious experiments, attempted to trace the connexion between cexi3.m peculiarities in the mani- festation of electricity, and the unhealthzness of the season. If certain states of the electric fluid have * See art. Cholera, page 83, torn. v. f Cholera.