First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/142 page 110
    their injection. Narcotics and tonics to be added accord- ing to circumstances. There is an analogy between the circumstances under which trismus nascentium occurs and the coma of in- anition of infants described by Gooch. A state analogous to delirium tremens is well known to surgeons to occur after accidents and operations, which induces some to give an opiate almost uniformly after operation, and the surgeons formerly often gave one before it. This state comes on sometimes in hos- pitals, in the persons of patients who have been in the habit of drinking much fermented liquor ; but we must not imagine that dehrium tremens, or delirium sine febre, comes on in those only who use stimulants freely ; it will occur in a variety of circumstances. where there is irrita- tion, and over excitement of the nervous system, with exhaustion, or a debilitated instead of plethoric consti- tution, some cases of this kind occur after parturition, in hysteria, in hypochondriasis, subsequently to apoplexy or wounds of the head, when much depletion has been necessarily resorted to, after hcemorrhage, sensual ex- haustion, or over study, and anxiety. In all these cases tonics are especially useful, and in some stimulants and; opiates: are necessary to prevent collapse, and in many to excite the brain to an increase of action, and .in those cases where there is want of sleep, opium is generally preferable to stimulants alone, without any narcotic, as producing the tendency to sleep without so much increasing the force of the pulse, which may in some instances, such as the cases after apoplexy and injuries.of the head: be contraindicated, on account of the risk of increasing local injury ; which cases some-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3