Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche.

René La Roche

Date:: 1854

Credit: Pneumonia : its supposed connection, pathological and etiological, with autumnal fevers, including an enquiry into the existence and morbid agency of malaria / by R. La Roche. 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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$sition of the blood, wliich, according to manj,' it notably defibrinates, and renders fluid, dark, and incoagulable; or, as would appear to result from the numerous experiments and observations of Briquet,^ it renders, on the contrary, richer in fibrin; and it would not be difl&cult to point out instances in which, when pushed to what certain physicians in our country would regard as safe and eren moderate doses, it has caused death,^ not only in animals experi- mented upon, but in the human species. With these facts before us, it cannot be deemed improper to suggest t\e necessity of abstaining from administering the remedy in larger doses than are strictly necessary to insure its specific effect—which effect, in fevers, especially, is due not so much to the sedative as to the purely antiperiodic property it possesses. That this property, which the advocates of sedation have often con- founded in theory with the latter is real, will not be denied by those who have seen quinia stop intermittent fever without pro- ducing any apparent effect on the system, save a little buzzing of the ears. In the next place, it is not improper to suggest the pro- priety, as a general rule, of desisting, except in cases of extreme emergency, from the use of it during the continuance of high febrile excitement, and especially during the existence of well-marked local inflammation, and of reserving it for the period when by other means an abatement or removal of these have been obtained; or for those instances in which the disease assumes a congestive or pernicious character, and must be put a stop to at all hazard. Let it not be forgotten that some of the most decided believers in the sedative property of quinia, who are friendly to its use in large doses in fevers—intermittent and remittent—and have tried it on a large scale, are decidedly opposed to its employment in those dis- eases whenever the surfaces with which it comes in contact—the mucous membranes of the stomach and bowels—are in a state of ' Magendie, Legons sur les Phdnomenes Physiques de la Vie; M^lier, Mdm. de I'Acad. de M6d. x. 725, &c.; Giacomini, Annali Univeraali de Medicina, March, 1841; Baldwin, Am. J. xiii. (N. S.) 299; Guersant, Diet, de Med. xxvi. 567; Bulletin de TAcad. de M(;d. viii. 905; Bonora and Arvedi, Ann.- Univ. de Medicina, March, 1843, quoted by M61ier; Monneret, Mem. sur le S. de Q, a haute dose, June' 27, 1843 ; Lc- groux, op. oil. 0, 2 Trait6 Therapeutique, &c. 82, &c. ' Depuisaye, Examinateur Med. ]5th Feb. 1843, quoted by M^lier, 733; Briquet, Journal de Mud. de M. Beau, quoted by Melier ; Pi6dagncl, communicated to M^lier, Baldwin, op. cii. 293, 299; Guersant, op. cit. 5G8. 31$