A practical and pathological inquiry into the sources and effects of derangements of the digestive organs, embracing dejection, and some other affections of the mind / by William Cooke.

  • Cooke, William, 1785-1873.
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical and pathological inquiry into the sources and effects of derangements of the digestive organs, embracing dejection, and some other affections of the mind / by William Cooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    100/318 (page 84)
    every other day with a scruple of 'mercurial ointment. During the three or four days immediately following the first bath the bowels were relaxed, and he voided much more urine than he had for some time; but afterwards the bowels settled into a moderately regular state, though it was occasionally requisite to give him a gentle aperient. Through the first week of adopting this plan he was im- mediately under my own eye, and afterwards the effects of the remedies v/ere very closely watched; nevertheless, though the bath not unfrequently produced considerable irritation and tingling in the skin of the legs quite to the knees, yet I never could detect any specific influence on hepatic secretion. It appeared useful, however, as a bath, and as a counter-irritant; and in a few other cases in which I have employed it, its utility seemed to be confined to these effects. At the expiration of a week after commencing the bath, he was placed with his mamma in lodgings at Stock- well, where I saw him almost every day. The bath was continued about three weeks, and then water was sub- stituted for the acid. At the expiration of a month he was evidently much improved. His countenance, by the de- crease of pallidness, and of lividness in the circumference of the eyes, indicated an improved state of circulation. He had no pain in the liver or stomach, and was more lively, but his appetite still was defective, and his tongue furred. ■ During the preceding three months he had taken no mercury, unless it were an occasional small dose, and he had so uniformly become worse after repeating this mineral a few times, that although it seemed almost essential to the removal of the increased bulk of the liver, yet its renewal was somewhat dreaded. The seizing of the fairest oppor- tunity, and the adaptation of the dose, constitute the chief points in the administration of mercury ; and in August his general health was so much improved, and he was so free from evidence of active disease, that he was directed to take a grain and half of blue pill at bed-time for four successive nights, and then to omit one or two; and also to take fifteen dro])s of nitro-muriatic acid twice a day.