Therapeutics founded upon organopathy and antipraxy / by William Sharp.
- William Sharp
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Therapeutics founded upon organopathy and antipraxy / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.
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![pi-esent symptoms indicative of great debility and of blood-j)oisoning. This is the theory, the inference follows;— For these reasons it seems obvious that depletion can never be necessary; but that, as a rule, the strength of the patient should be sustained. . . . To support strength such nourishment as he can take should be administered frequently and in small quantities [little and often] ; milk, eggs, beef-tea, arrow-root, sago, and the like, are most suitable for the purpose ; to which, if the pulse be failing and the tongue dry, brandy, wine, or ale (if the patient prefer it), should be added.* Feeding and stimulating are here, not inductions from observation and experiment, but deductions from hypo- thesis. It is imagined that the symptoms are indicative of debility and blood-poisoning, and the inference is that depletion can never be necessary. On the same hy- pothesis. Dr. Fordyce gave Peruvian bark in substance in as great a quantity as the patient's stomach will bear, which is commonly to the quantity of a dram every hourP In Sir Astley Cooper's time this was changed for the Sulphate of Quinine. So that my friend Dr. Bristowe is in very good company. But Sir William Lawrence, no mean observer, following Sydenham, writes thus :— I am quite at a loss to discover in this affection those marks of debility which some have so much insisted on. • ... As this affection resembles other inflammations in its causes, symptoms, and effects, so [for these reasons] it must be treated on the same principle; that on the antiphlogistic plan. Venesection, local bleeding, purging, * A Treatise on the Theory and I>radice of Medicine, by J. S. Bristowe, M.D., F.R.S,, p. 302, 2nd Ed., 1878. E](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21446210_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
