Dr. Stevens's treatise on the cholera, extracted from his work entitled Observations on the healthy and diseased properties of the blood / [William Stevens].

  • William Stevens
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Stevens's treatise on the cholera, extracted from his work entitled Observations on the healthy and diseased properties of the blood / [William Stevens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from Mr. Wakefield, the intelligent and highly respectable practitioner who has the medical charge of the prisoners.’] — Editor of the Gazette. c Lansdown-Place, Brunswick-Square, April 25, 1832. £ Sir, — So much has already been written on the subject of Cholera, that I should not now appear before the public, but from a conviction that the facts which I am about to state, if generally known and properly authenticated, (which they can easily be,) must be useful to those of the profession who in future may be called upon to treat this new, but most malignant disease. c The first case which I saw occurred on the 5th of this month, in the prison at Cold-Bath Fields. Three others quickly followed, and were immediately put under the common treatment: these four patients died, after a short illness, with all the symptoms of Cholera distinctly marked. ‘ Soon after the commencement of the disease, a number of the prisoners were attacked with marked symptoms of derangement in the gastric organs; and as all of these cases occurred in the infected part of the prison, it is more than probable from this, as well as the general appearance of the patients, that the diarrhoea with which they were attacked, was the effect of the poison which produces Cholera. From having seen similar cases in the com¬ mencement transformed rapidly into a state of collapse, my conviction is that every one of those patients were more or less in serious danger; and I believe also that, had they either been left to themselves or improperly treated, the majority of these cases would have run into a state of collapse, per¬ haps in a few hours; indeed I have little doubt that the one-half of them would have been lost under the practice which is generally adopted in the treatment of this disease.
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