A treatise on tetanus : being the essay for which the Jacksonian Prize, for the year 1834, was awarded, by the Royal College of Surgeons, in London / by Thomas Blizard Curling.

Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on tetanus : being the essay for which the Jacksonian Prize, for the year 1834, was awarded, by the Royal College of Surgeons, in London / by Thomas Blizard Curling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Ill ollei’iiig tliese suggestions for tlic management of Tetanus, on what I conceive to be more scientific principles, I am fully conscious how little value can be attached to them from any adequate trial of the means recommended. And yet they are not sub- mitted without mature consideration. The whole phenomena of Tetanus have been carefully investi- gated, the experience and opinions of different prac- titioners duly weighed, and my own opportunities for observation at a large hospital, remarkable for the number of its accidents, have not been neglected. Future experience, however, will decide how far the class of remedies recommended are calculated to meet the exigences of the different forms of the dis- ease. Perhaps for acute Tetanus, a sure and safe remedy in all cases is yet to be discovered. But if we clearly understand the indications to be fulfilled, j and direct our treatment accordingly, we are infi- | nitely more likely, as science advances, to find out j this remedy, than by groping in the dark, or by dis- ] regarding the lights of experience, and stumbling where others have failed before us. If our present means are inadequate to the ends in view, we must seek for fresh resources from the botanist and the chemist; but in the application of these resources, we had better far pursue the course which reason suggests, than trust to the chances of empiricism.