Asiatic cholera : an inquiry into its nature, and how to deal with it.

  • Pairman, Robert
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : an inquiry into its nature, and how to deal with it. 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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    killing emetic at the beginning of the disease. We have reason to believe, that a very minute dose of chlorine would either modify or destroy all Cholera seeds, and all infectious effluvia whatever. When people hang a towel, wet Avith solution of chloride of lime, in the tainted atmosphere of a sick-room, the vapour evolved from it can be breathed with perfect impunity ; yet surely it has an influence on the febrile malaria. Dr Graham, writing on scarlatina, tells us never to neglect such a precaution in the sick-room, because the vapour evolved, mild though it be, has an extraordinary influence in destroying the poison. Might it not be found, by experiments on dogs, that the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal could bear without undue ‘irritation, four, six, perhaps eight times, more than the membrane of the lungs is fit to do ? People will scout at the idea of the grand principles of sanitary reform being brought to bear on the stomachs of men ! But the idea (perhaps ridiculous) could it only safely be realized, would be truly sublime. And while boards of health were dealing with the enemy in all the dens of pestilence—white- washing and fumigating our closes and our wynds—their medical officers, by household visitation, while the epidemic continued, might cleanse from their im- purities all tainted stomachs, and disinfect every bowel from the seeds of death! On the whole, however, I merely throw out this as a hint (1 trust in the right direction), to more ingenious minds—having little faith that in practice this precise antidote would be found free from strong objections, or likely to work as one would wish. In the meantime, let me impress on my medical brethren the importance of conjoining hydropathic treatment, both by external friction and otherwise, more than they do, with whatever other measures they think judicious. This, indeed, is the advice of one (whom it behoves to speak with diffidence), having never treated more than a single case. In some respects, therefore, it is highly presumptuous. Still, it is the advice of one who, from theoretic reasoning alone, independent altogether of the assertions of hydropathists, is so conscientiously convinced of the value of water in this disease, that if himself prostrated in all the helplessness of its collapse stage, and the alternative was proposed to him, “ Not one grain of drugs, or, not one drop of water ?” would unhesitatingly whisper out, with all the energy left him, “ By all means throw physic to the dogs : let me cling to water as the anchor of my hopes.” If he died under the water system, he would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he was dying of the disease. Whereas, in the other case, he would probably spend his last con- scious moments, in vainly attempting to solve the problem (perhaps after being coffined!) Am I dying of Cholera, or of its Cure? the END. \ CLASGOAJ
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