Volume 1

Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson.

  • New Sydenham Society
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    cious, as the simple infusion of the powder of glass of antimony in a generous white-wine^ guarded with some suitable stomachic spice. This possesses, experto crede! this alone possesses the whole virtues of antimony. It is a rough emetic in a large dose; given in a few drops, twenty or thirty for example, it will just excite a breathing sweat: increase the dose a little, you have a mild and safe purge. What will any other pre- paration of antimony do more ? Besides, notwithstanding the great powers this antimonial wine appears possessed of, yet the particles of that mineral are but as it were in effluvia in the menstruum; so that from their extreme minuteness, they with the greatest ease pervade the most intricate meanders of the vascular system, and at the same time are so powerful as to stimulate even the great alimentary canal itself (much more the smaller ones of the human body), while the tenuity of their parts prevent them from doing any injury to either the one or the other. Here, worthy reader, I present you with a medicine, simple in its preparation, indeed, but noble in its virtues, since with it you may safely remove most obstructions of the vascular system, whether you aim only at cleansing the primes vies, or thoroughly scouring the minuter canals. It is at once the surest and the safest sweat, for it heats sufficiently without overdoing it; hence it is particularly beneficial in all fevers of the slow and inter- mitting kind, and in most chronical diseases, but above all in an old obstinate rheumatism. In short, I take upon me to affirm, that this medicine does not want one virtue that is to be found in any other preparation of antimony, however dignified by pomp of language or elaborate composition. The whole quantity of rain this year = 27*36.^’ [Coincident with this visitation were Earthquakes, a Comet, and an Eruption of Vesuvius.^ In February, 1738, coughs and anginas were very common amongst horses, by which numbers of them were suffocated. Although the season was not unhealthy, yet very many persons dwindled away in a pulmonary consumption, occasioned by the catarrhal fever improperly treated, which was rife in the latter end of November and December. In May, apoplexies and palsies were common.]