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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away, the narcotic part produces the sleep just as cer- tainly. It having been also observed that a state of exhaustion succeeds intoxication or any other abuse of stimulus, it became thus adopted as an axiom by many that there could be no sedative effect but secon- dary as the result of previous excitement, and | have found many who: endeavoured to prove that digitalis first produces a stimulant effect, the only apparently good argument in my opinion that they could bring forward is, that digitalis sometimes makes the pulse quicker than it was before, but I answer that every person who has bled a few patients must have observed the pulse to get quicker as the patient becomes faint, I say then the increased frequency of the pulse is no proof, as no person will call blood letting to syncope a stimu- lant. It may however be advanced that in inflamma- tory complaints the pulse will become not only more frequent but harder, that is in fact stronger whilst the patient is taking digitalis, but that is not owing to the digitalis; when the patient does not get enough, a few drops only being administered at each dose or if bleeding and other remedies be neglected, or the inflammation be not controlable by any means (even in the most skilful hands), the inflammation increasing the pulse becomes harder, but this is not the effect of digitalis any more than venesection. Every practitioner of experience ‘must have found the pulse get harder after a bleeding, (which has not been sufficient to subdue the inflamma- tion,) until another bleeding has softened it; no doubt digitalis as well as venesection may raise the pulse when it has been sunk by inflammation below the natural standard as will be explained hereafter. We should

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