A text-book of medicine : for students and practitioners / by Adolf Strümpell ; translated by permission from the 2nd and 3rd German editions by Herman F. Vickery and Philip Coombs Knapp ; with editorial notes by Frederick C. Shattuck.
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A text-book of medicine : for students and practitioners / by Adolf Strümpell ; translated by permission from the 2nd and 3rd German editions by Herman F. Vickery and Philip Coombs Knapp ; with editorial notes by Frederick C. Shattuck. 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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![ing is still often made, but seldom succeeds, and tortures and exhausts the child. Warm baths with cold douches may prove very beneficial. They excite deep respiration and more vigorous coughing, and also tone up the whole nervous system. The wet pack is also often employed, and sometimes with great benefit. Outward applications upon the throat are of little use. In general, we prefer the cold, wet compress to the ice-bag and ice-poultice, wliich are likewise often em- ployed. [Dr. Geo. W. Gay says (“Phila. Med. Times,” 1884) : “Not a single case of pseudo-membranous laryngitis has ever recovered in the Boston City Hospital without operation.” In twenty years tracheotomy has been done one hundred and eighteen times with thirty-nine recoveries. Four, if not five, successful cases were practically moribund at the time of operation.] In the severe cases of septic diphtheria, treatment usually proves completely futile. We must seek to avert cardiac paralysis as well as we can by stimulants, such as wane and camphor, and endeavor to improve respiration and the condition of the nervous system by lukewarm baths combined with douches. Finally, we repeat that the physician should never neglect to maintain the patient’s strength, as far as possible, by proper nourishment. The nervous sequelae of diphtheria are best treated with the constant current. As an internal remedy, iron is good, and also nux vomica or strychnine. The last may be given subcutaneously, if desired, in doses of gr. ferm- 0’001-0'002). [Diphtheria is a disease which involves commonly much exhaustion, and too much stress can hardly be laid on the importance of administering the maximum amount of nourishment in the most assimilable and easily swallowed forms from the start. It is also important to give stimulants early in most cases, not Availing for signs of exhaustion. Enormous quantities of brandy can often be given to small children without the slightest toxic effect. No general rule can be laid down ; the requirements of each case must be studied anti. met. When painful deglutition interferes with nutrition, peptonized milk, eggs, brandy, and the like, must be given by the rectum. Rectal alimentation and stimulation are also to be resorted to in cases of post-diphtheritic paralysis of the oesophagus.] CHAPTER XI. DYSENTERY. iEtiology.—By “ dysentery ” is meant a disease of the colon, which appears sporadically, but more often in epidemics ; it is excited by infection with an organized pathogenetic poison, about which we have as yet no further knowl- edge ; and the infection is probably at first a local one. The true home of dysentery is hi warmer and tropical countries, where the disease is much more violent and wide-spread than here. For example, the mortality among the soldiers of the Anglo-Indian army due to dysentery is said to be thirty per cent, of the entire number of deaths. In our climate most of the epidemics occur at the end of summer and in autumn. Endemic influences are certainly important. The condition of the soil in some places is evidently very favorable for the develop- ment and dissemination of dysenteric germs, and that of other places is equally](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21981565_0101.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
