Copy 1, Volume 1

The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    719/752 (page 649)
    of these the subcarbonate of iron, given in doses from a Gew. IV. scruple to a drachm, is praised by Dr. Bree and Laennec. sacri The latter speaks particularly of its benefit in pallid re- General laxed habits, and both in the dry asthma and the ner- *™™* vous *.] | Inhalations cannot well be tried during the paroxysms, Gaseous but they have been very generally had recourse to in the ir wad intervals, and have consisted of very different vapours. When pneumatic medicine was at the height of its popu- larity, much benefit was supposed to be derived from the use of oxygen and hydrogen gases. Dr. Beddoes was peculiarly attached to the former, and thus describes its effects with his constitutional warmth of expression :— ** No sooner does it touch the lungs, than the livid colour of the countenance disappears, the laborious respiration ceases, and the functions of all the thoracic organs go on easily and pleasantly again.” Yet, with all this high re- commendation, few patients choose to be cured in this manner in the present day ; oxygen gas is now rarely ad- verted to by asthmatics or their medical attendants ; and the remedy, from having been extolled beyond its proper level, has fallen back into an unmerited disregard. Dr. Ferriar has spoken in more sober terms of the benefit of hydrogen in the first species; and I am induced to be- lieve that a long perseverance in the use of this gas may often produce the effects he has ascribed to it;. but it is rarely that I have seen it so decidedly useful as to ascribe the patient’s recovery to this remedy, rather than to other means he had been employing at the same time. Warm aromatic fumes have been also tried; as prophy- Fumiga- lactics, obtained from various substances. The smoking Ween of tobacco has very extensively been recommended; the leaves of the scandix odorata were at one time in still higher repute ; but both have of late years given way to those of the datura stramonium or thorn-apple. Most of these con- tain a narcotic power, and whatever benefit they produce is hence, perhaps, chiefly derived: but either this narcotic power, or the stimulating power with which it is so inti- mately united, has at times been found to bring on a dif- ficulty of swallowing. * On Diseases of the Chest, &c. p. 418.