An effectual and simple remedy for scarlet fever and measles : with an appendix of cases.

  • Witt, Charles.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An effectual and simple remedy for scarlet fever and measles : with an appendix of cases. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    A few days after the first edition was published, the author was gratified by the receipt of a letter from Mr. Henry Jackson, the senior surgeon to the Sheffield Infirmary, expressing his great pleasure at the pub- lication of a method of treating Scarlet Fever and Measles, with which he and his father had long been familiar. Both these gentlemen had, in common with Mr. Wilkinson, derived their knowledge of the am- monia treatment from Dr. Peart. They had used no other treatment for upwards of fifty years; and during that long period he states, that only four deaths from Scarlet Fever had occurred to them. Of these, two were children who died in a room, under the boarded floor of which, open cesspools were afterwards dis- covered. In consequence of this discovery, an in- vestigation was made in the other two instances, and it was found that the drains, which passed beneath the floor, were open from decay, in several places. In these four cases, it may not be incorrectly said, that death ensued from drain fever in a scarlet dress. The late Dr. Baly at once adopted this treatment as soon as the author made it known to him ; and he often expressed his conviction that its merits were by no means overstated, and that he had been thereby enabled to save many patients who, in his belief, would otherwise have died. The author feels, that any addition to the weight of evidence and medical testimony brought forward in these pages, is wholly unnecessary; and that he has only to continue his endeavours to make the treatment of Eruptive Fevers by ammonia more and more known, to ensure ultimately its general adoption.