On the use of the alcoholic stimulants in fever : a paper read before the Glasgow Southern Medical Society, on the 19th Aug. 1847 / [John Leech].

  • Leech, John
Date:
1848
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of the alcoholic stimulants in fever : a paper read before the Glasgow Southern Medical Society, on the 19th Aug. 1847 / [John Leech]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    The above well substantiated fact furnishes a powerful argument for total abstinence fi'om all sorts of alcoholic preparations by per- sons in health, as a habit not only unnecessary, but in every case more or less injurious to health and vigour; while they place the chances of the recovery of the party addicted to them, when under sickness, especially in typhus, on the wrong side of the balance. n. What are some of the more immediate symptoms indicating the necessity of alcholic stimuli in fever? These are too numerous for us to consider in minute detail in our limited space, and I will be content with a mere enumeration of a few of the more prominent. When, after adopting general and local measures calculated to subdue the excitement, we shall yet find, that, while the inflamma- tory symptoms are relieved, still the delirium continues unabated, or when we learn that the patient had been addicted to intemperance, or that any circumstance arising from his previous habits or occupa- tion has a tendency to excite or to exhaust the sensorium—when the pulse gets small, weak, and irregular—the skin cold and moist— when injudicious depletion had been adopted, or excesive diarrhoea in- duced or arisen spontaneously—when the delii’ium is low muttering, or accompanied with twitching of the limbs—^when the abdomen feels tympanitic, with cold extremities, and the patient is laid, if we may be allowed the expression, in a state of supine pi’ostration, the urgent necessity th^t exists for the exhibition of stimulants is quite evident; due caution and attention to the other contra-indicat- ing symptoms being premised at their admission, and continued throughout during their administration. III. What are a few of the principal rules to guide us in regulat- ing, 1st, the quantity; 2d, the particular form in which alcohol is to be administered in fever cases. (1st.) As regards quantity. It is superfluous to mention here that the age, the sex, the habits of the patient, as well as the type of the prevailing fever, each and all, require our careful attention; hence every case requires to be studied individually, as also in its relation to extrinsic circumstances; and the very frequent embarrassment felt by us from the difliculty that exists of ascertaining the naked facts, are sometimes sulRciently annoying, and I would here make a remark or two on this subject, which, though they be of a general nature, come under the present bead without impropriety.
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