The nature of cholera investigated : with a supplemental chapter on treatment; addressed to junior practitioners / by John George French.

  • French, John George, 1804-1887.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature of cholera investigated : with a supplemental chapter on treatment; addressed to junior practitioners / by John George French. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    in proportion as the poison is abstracted from the system, by which the freedom of the heart's action is gradually regained. As long as the heart is unable to carry on the circulation with vigour, or in other words until reaction is fully established, the action of vomiting, by mechanical compression of the abdominal muscles, assists the circulation of the blood. The patient may thus immediately return to health, or the disturbance of the circulation may give rise to local congestions or inflammations in the various viscera. If this view of the pathology be correct, then the therapeutical principles on which the treatment is to be conducted requires to be considered with great discrimination. It is clear that if a secretion take place to eliminate a poison or relieve a con- gestion, that there can be no wisdom in immediate efforts to stop it. But is the opposite course wiser] namely, to assist Nature in those efforts by the use of purgatives'? Certainly not, that process is best accomplished by Nature's own efforts. I do not believe in the existence of any analogy whatever