First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Billing, Archibald, 1791-1881
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/402 (page 61)
    I cannot help here hazarding a speculation upon hydrophobia ; namely, that it is produced by a virus which poisons the nerves it reaches, takes a considerable time to contaminate the rest of the nervous system, and will eventually be remedied by some medicine which conquers neuritis—per- haps arsenic— perhaps some narcotic. My own inclination would be to try as much arsenic as the constitution would bear, combined with plenty of opium, which always enables the patient to take more arsenic than he could without it. I have found this to be the case in old cases of ague and of dysentery, which I have cured by the combination ; indeed, it is also proved by the efficacy of opium as an antidote to arsenic.* the virus, which is generated by the diseased local action. We can see by the microscope that the virus of the discharges of dif- ferent diseases consists of particles of different shape and size, enough to account for a different and specific decomposition pro- duced by each of them in the parts with which they come in contact ; and the corpuscles in the lymph thrown out, being of different shape and size from those of healthy granulation and pus, partly explains the non-healing of such unhealthy, if not malignant sores. * It is not very uncommon, on patients being brought to the hospital in consequence of having taken poison, to find that, thinking to make assurance doubly sure by taking arsenic and laudanum together, they have saved their lives. In an experience of many years, I have always found these cases do best; and many patients who had taken arsenic (arsenious acid) we have recovered by laudanum and calcined magnesia freely adminis- tered ; making use, according to circumstances, of the stomach- pump, leeches, and other means not necessary to be enumerated here. The pain (morbid sensibility), independent of inflamma- tion, would kill, if not relieved by opium, as I have spoken of