A sketch of a popular and a novel treatment for diarrhoea, dysentery, and English and Asiatic cholera : with illustrative cases of the diseases / by Edmund Skiers.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A sketch of a popular and a novel treatment for diarrhoea, dysentery, and English and Asiatic cholera : with illustrative cases of the diseases / by Edmund Skiers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    storaacli; • tlic tongue is freer, and moist from tlic secretion of the saliva, and the voice strengthens; tlic; patient demands less drink, and often exclaim.s, what must I drink more ? When this is observed, there is a returning glow, with warmth and perspiration easily kept up on the skin; the countenance, more or less reddened, is beamy and calm, and a desire felt for sleep. When at this fortunate stage of reaction, inquiry should be had to the functions of the kidneys and the state of the bladder, as, from the dormant action, the bladder might be found, unknowingly, dis- tended, and too weak to contract, and it may tlius freely rise up in the empty abdomen, where space from emptiness is found; or the obstruction might be from a mass of agglutinating, thick, plastic, mucous exudation, clogging up the urethra and the neck of the bladder; therefore, if water has not passed, or if a little has passed, and the bladder, by percussion, is felt to be distended and risen high above the pubis, the urine must be d];awn off by the catheter, or else in the midst of our joy, after the sleep of reaction, we may have urinary absorption and urinary fever *; so, * It has been argued that the suppression of the secretion of the kidneys, as that of the liver and skin, is from the inordinate action of the bowels ; that these fluids pass undetected through the bowels with the excess of its secretion. We must not satisfy ourselves thus, however inordinate the secretion of the skin by perspiration. The activity of the kidneys, and the liver and bowels, will cease ; but still we shall not find a total suppression of the secretion of the kidneys : the urine, scanty, will pass,— if in a few drops, it will be highly concentrated; but even the passage of that drop, in Asiatic cholera, is a bountiful hope and sign of Hfe and secretive action. So, with a slight purge, bile will be brought down, however excessive the sweat of the skin.