Facts and conclusions as to the use of alcoholic stimulants in typhus fever / by W.T. Gairdner.

  • William Tennant Gairdner
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts and conclusions as to the use of alcoholic stimulants in typhus fever / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    practical limits of the administration of stimulants, in the first instance, in the case of typhus fever. For, whatever differences of opinion may exist on the subject in general, no one can refuse to admit that typhus fever is the disease in which the practice of stimulation has been most largely followed, and in which it has found the most general acceptance, as being in accordance both with rational theory and actual experience of facts. Moreover, typhus fever, as marked by the eruption, is a remarkably well-defined disease, in which, with proper securities against error, there is likely to be hut little difference between the diagnosis of one well-informed hospital physician and another; and besides, typhus has constituted by far the largest proportion of all the fevers treated in hospital in Glasgow of late years. Further, the arrangements of the Glasgow Fever Hospital allow of a tolerably accurate estimate both of the usual mortality of typhus fever, and of the amount of stimu- lants habitually administered. Finally, it is very satisfactory to myself that this can he done 'without involving personal considerations, or placing my own practice in opposition to that of any other individual physician. For all these reasons, I propose, in the present paper, to confine the argument rigidly within the hounds assigned to it in the title, although it would he easy to strengthen my case by allusions to other diseases, and to other fields of practice than the hospital. I expect, then, to he able to show in this paper—1st, That it is possible to reduce the mortality of typhus fever, while with- holding a large proportion of the amount of alcoholic stimu- lants usually given; 2nd, That this diminution of mortality may take place at all ages, hut is most marked among the young; 3rd, That while at all ages the administration of stimulants ought to he very strictly guarded, as likely to prove injurious when in excess, it is demonstrable that young and temperate persons may he advantageously treated (i.e., treated with a diminished mortality) withov,t one drop of toine or spirits heincj given from beginning to end of the fever, except in the rarest casualties; 4th, That the principle of giving stimulants as a matter of routine, in typhus (i.e., at a certain stage of the dis- ease, with hut little regard to individual peculiarities), ought to ho at once abandoned; 5th, That an approximation can he