Medical report of the Whitworth Hospital, containing an account of dysentery, as it appeared in the latter end of 1818 / by J. Cheyne.

Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical report of the Whitworth Hospital, containing an account of dysentery, as it appeared in the latter end of 1818 / by J. Cheyne. 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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    great relief which profuse haemorrhage from the bowels sometimes affords to the patient in dysen- tery. But there were cases requiring a procedure still more decided; cases wherein the disease had re- sisted the foregoing method so long as to excite an apprehension of extensive ulceration, or in which it began with unusual violence, or in which, after proceeding moderately for a time, symptoms of great danger suddenly arose ; as for instance, intole- rance of the slightest pressure, agonizing pain, un- ' ceasing tenesmus, great pyrexia ; in these cases the method recommended by some of the late writers on tropical diseases* was used with advantage. In the course of a single hour the patient has been largely blooded, has taken two grains of opium and a scru- ple of calomel, has had the warm bath, and been swathed in flannel,! by which means we have ob- tained breathing time to pursue our plans more de- liberately. Were the same cases again to be placed under my care, I would not hesitate to prescribe opium in doses of four or five grains, as it was the opium chiefly which seemed to me to arrest the progress of the inflammation, and whatever in such a case pro- cured respite for the patient from agony, sometimes proved of permanent benefit. After the large dose of calomel and opium, calomel in doses of five grains, with half a grain of opium, every third or fourth hour, was given till it produced ptyalism ; as
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