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.

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sickness and purging, excessive prostration of strength, to be combated by opium, laudanum and brandy with hot water, hot vapor or water baths, and fomentations. Some give castor oil along with the stimulants, but “Many cases are cured without the oil, it may be of use, by promoting the passage of the stimulants along the canal, in case the opium should diminish the peristaltic motion in the upper parts, but this does not seem likely to occur in an injurious degree ; some give calomel also, which may be of use to promote the healthy action of the liver towards convalescence, but, to save life in the urgent state of the collapse, stimulants are the direct means, and must be given not measured by the ordi- nary routine, but freely and repeatedly administered, only to be regulated by the tolerance of the remedies, tincture of opium from a drachm to half an ounce at a time, with brandy and hot water, in equal parts fre- quently repeated. Bleeding is often necessary with this stimulation because the action of the heart is so weak that it does not keep up enough of motion in the blood to prevent it from coagulating, and unless the freedom of circulation be assisted by venesection, the stimulants cannot give the heart power enough; and thongh the blood may have begun to thicken and “ oozes out at first like treacle,’’ the renewed motion as it flows makes it fluid, as blood is kept liquid by the butchers for par- ticular purposes by stirring it. We see uniformly that the effect of sedatives is to constringe the capillaries, and in the first instance inde- pendent of the vis a tergo, to diminish inflammation, so that however necessary to attend to the heart’s action as influencing the pulse, we must continually refer to

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