Remarks on the history and treatment of delirium tremens / by John Ware.

  • Ware, John, 1795-1864.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the history and treatment of delirium tremens / by John Ware. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    25/68
    nected with the time and mode of its attack, which require particular notice. The delirium often comes on when the patient is convalescent from the primary disease. In cholera or diarrhoea it may supervene when the vomiting and evacuations from the bowels have ceased, and the weight of the attack seems to have subsided. In in- flammations of the lungs or pleura, after the violence of the symptoms has abated, after the cough and dif- ficulty of breathing have been relieved, and the pulse have returned to the natural standard, we often per- ceive very unexpectedly the approach of those symp- toms which indicate an attack of Delirium Tremens. The delirium may also come on when the patient is only apparently convalescent; and it is to be re- marked, that in whatever state of the system or of disease an individual is attacked with Delirium Tre- mens, any other morbid affection which pre-exists, is absorbed or at least obscured by it. Thus the appa- rent convalescence may arise from the obscurity which is thrown over the original symptoms by the approach of those which precede the new complaint. We may erroneously conclude that the patient ceases to suffer, because he ceases to complain; and that the ravages of disease have been checked, because their external indications can be no longer observed. We may learn that this is so from instances in which the pri- mary disorder is again exhibited after the cessation of the paroxysm of Delirium Tremens; or in which death takes place during the paroxysm, and dissection shows that it had never ceased to exist.