The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions: being a treatise on the principal diseases incidental to Europeans in the East and West Indies, Mediterranean, and coast of Africa (Volume 2).

  • James Johnson
Date:
1824
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of tropical climates on European constitutions: being a treatise on the principal diseases incidental to Europeans in the East and West Indies, Mediterranean, and coast of Africa (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ointment, or rubbing thein with calomel, for the pur- pose of encouraging this secretion, is extremely- inef- fectual. Sometimes severe diarrhoea comes on during the early stages of recovery, attended with want of sleep; in which case I have derived the greatest advantage from small doses of opium, combined with calomel. We are usually advised, in all fevers which show a tendency to intermit, to watch this period carefully ; and to avail ourselves of the earliest opportunity such circumstances afford, of exhibiting bark in large doses, with a view to obviate the debilittj which, it is said, predisposes to the formation and retui-n of an- other paroxysm. That in some fevers, and in certain habits and ronstitutions, this may be highly expedient and advisable, 1 do not venture to deny, as such prac- tice stands supported by the best authority, and is jus- tified by ample experience. Without entering, however, into an examination of the above principles, wbich generally direct its use, I feel myself warranted to affirm, from tiie result of several cases in which this plan was adopted, in the fever now under consideration, that bark served only to exasperate the local disease, and to aggravate every symptonj of the succeeding paroxysm. In many cases which occurred towards the final cessation of the epidemic, at the close of the autumnal season, the local sym])toms wei-e much milder, and the fever became intermittent, after a moderate eva- cuation of blood, and a free use of laxative medicines. In those cases, calomel was the medicine I chiefly em- ployed ; and I almost invariably observed that, when carried to an extent sufficient to manifest its action on the system by the usual criterion, the paroxysm soon after ceased to return.—Ed. Journal. The testimony of such a man as Boyle in favour of the union of depletory measures with a mercurial treatment, will have some weighty and in conjunction
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