Lectures delivered at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, 1883-1884 / by Robert J. Lee.

  • Lee, Robert James
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures delivered at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, 1883-1884 / by Robert J. Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    advocated at different times was drawn up at considerable length in the Archiv fur KinderheilTcunde, by Dr. Cassel (“Zur therapie der Tussis Convulsiva, &c.,” 1883, p. 373). When you understand the importance of attention to details you will readily perceive what a hopeless task it must be to reconcile the different results of different observers who have not attended to them. The chief value of Dr. Cassel’s analysis is not, as he supposed, to supply us with practical information, but to show how very ignorant most of us are in respect to the simplest and most necessary details. The first point which we must determine is this :—Under what conditions does phenol or carbolic acid assume the form of vapour? It must be quite clear to you that before we can expect any reliable results from the inhalation of a substance which, at the ordinary temperature, exists in the solid form, we must know precisely the conditions required to change it from the state of a solid to that of a vapour. Dor example, some have imagined that by mixing carbolic acid and water in a certain proportion, say three or four per cent., and sprinkling the floor of a room, or hanging up sheets moistened with .the solution, the air would be charged with the acid. It is true that an odour of the acid would be perceptible, but as the acid does not evaporate under these conditions to any appreciable extent, you can understand how far any thera- peutic effects could be expected from such a process. How then are we to obtain a vapour of definite strength ? That is the first point to be decided. How carbolic acid lends itself in a very happy manner to the therapeutic experiment. Although it does not evaporate at the ordinary temperature of a room, it is found that when mixed with water and boiled the steam thus generated carries off with it a certain amount of acid, and this amount for all practical purposes is the same proportionately as the solution from which the steam comes off. Dor example, if we make a two per cent, solution of the acid in water and boil it, either in an open vessel, or under K 2
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