On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson.

  • Robert Gooch
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson. 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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    ' slie passed a great quantity of imcommonly tliick and tuxbid urine, ' \nt]i a mucous sediment, she became free fi-om fever, and after ' eight or nine days she left the hospital. '' Although this unexpected recovery rejoiced me much, I was far ' from ascribing it to the medicine. I rather looked on the whole ' happy revolution as the effect of a natural crisis. It was not long ' before another lying-in woman, notwithstanding aU the means used, ' was in the same extreme circumstances. I gave her the same ' medicine with the same consequences, only the improvement was ' not so sudden. The patient had a profuse sweat, and passed urine ' wliich looked more hke a dissolved bilious stool than urine. In *■ five or six days she was perfectly restored. * * # * ' After twelve or fourteen such desperate cases, in which it always ' effected a cure in one and the same way, and after I had tried the ' common antimonial preparations without any good effect, and often ' with distinct injuiy, I began against my will to place especial con- ' fidence in it. After I was convinced of the efficacy of this medi- ' cine in cases where the disease had reached the highest degree, ' I proceeded to order it at the beginning of the disease. Erom that ' time, in our practice, the puerperal fever was never fatal; it never ' even reached a dangerous stage, for the medicine as certainly ' obviated the disease as it cured it when it was already foUy ' formed.'' For the truth of the foregoing statement. Dr. Boer appeals to those who accompanied liim at the bed-sides of those patients. ' Wlien,' he remarks, ' on the one hand I consider the preparation ' and the component parts of this antimonial remedy, and on the ' other the symptoms and nature of the disease in which it effected a ' cure, I can no longer reconcile myself with the common idea of the ' healing power of medicines. I am firmly of opinion, that either ' the succession of symptoms from wliich we conclude the presence ' of a disease are not sufficiently determined, and the true nature of ' most diseases is still liidden, or that certain substances must pro- ' duce in our bodies an entirely different effect to what we commonly ' bebeve.'* The sequel of tliis narrative is very disappointing. Dr. Boer never explained what liis antimonial preparation was. I have been told he would give it to any medical man with directions how to use * Dr. L. J. Bijer'a Abliandlungen und Versuche. Beobachtungen iiber das Kind- bettfiebor, b. i. s. 116.