A treatise on the origin, nature, prevention, and treatment of Asiatic cholera / by John C. Peters.

  • John Charles Peters
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the origin, nature, prevention, and treatment of Asiatic cholera / by John C. Peters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    SALT. This is one of the best antiseptics and disinfectants. Waring thinks there is but little doubt that salt is of the highest value in cholera; but says the fact must not be overlooked that cold water ad libitum, was allowed in addition; and in all cases in which cold water was used freely the mortality has been less than when it was withheld. The patient may be placed in a hot bath at one hundred and twenty degrees, in which four- teen to twenty pounds of salt is dissolved. Injections of hot salt water into the bowels are said, by Stevens himself, to be more reliable than injections into the veins, in full collapse. Stevens, Venables, Pidduck, Hastings, Goodrich, and others, gave two tablespoonfuls of table salt, dissolved in four to eight ounces of cold water, repeated every quarter of an hour, until free vomiting was produced, and then cold water in large draughts was advised to allay the insatiable thirst and heat of the stomach caused by the salt. Beaman gave three table- spoonfuls in half a pint of cold or tepid water. It restored the secretion of bile, diminished the cramps, increased the fulness of the pulse, and the voice became stronger and the strength greater ; but in twenty or thirty minutes the pulse may begin to flag, strength decrease, and cramps come back, when the salt must be repeated a second or third time. The latter is rarely necessary. Thus given, salt often produces vomiting in less than one miuute. Of six hundred and seven cases treated in this manner only one hundred and twelve died, or about twenty per cent. Hastings lost sixteen cases out of sixty-two under the salt treatment, and double that num- ber when he used opium and stimulants ; but Goodrich lost the whole of twelve cases in deep ho]3eless collapse. Pidduck gave as much as from four to eight ounces of table salt in a