Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the theory and practice of physic (Volume 1). 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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![treatment of dysentery, are mercury and opium. Blue pill and Dover's powder are an excellent combination, so are calomel and opium, and you may give either of these remedies alternately with a mild laxative, whenever you are led to suspect an accumulation of fecal matter in the bowels. Iri very bad cases it will be neces- sary to continue the mercury until the mouth is affected ; but in the sporadic dysentery of this country you will very seldom be under the necessity of bringing on actual salivation. Permit me here, gentlemen, to make a few observations on mer- curial action. In treating a case of dysentery, it does not, in the first place, follow as a matter of course that you will cure your pa- tient by subjecting him to the full influence of mercury. You are not to expect that salivation will be always attended with success. There is another point which should never be forgotten, although it is one which I believe has not been sufficiently considered. It is a common idea with respect to the administration of mercury in cases of local inflammation, that if you produce salivation you do a great deal towards accomplishing a cure, and this is true in most cases. Many persons are of opinion that it is the ptyalism which carries off the disease, and hence it is that we so often see the principal share of a practitioner's attention directed to produce salivation at all hazards. This is the history of the medical treatment ordinarily pursued in warm climates, where such vast quantities of calomel are given. Here the idea seems to be, that the disease is to be sub- dued by salivation alone, and accordingly the practitioner throws in mercury, an expression evidently arising from the enormous quantities given. There are many cases on record in which eight hundred and even one thousand grains have been given for the cure of a single local inflammation. But it is remarkable, that in several cases in which vast doses have been given,.no ptyalism has been produced, and thus it frequently happens, that the practitioner goes on increasing the quantity, lest he should have failed in consequence of not having given enough. All this practice is wrong and founded on false notions: and I think that when you come to practice your- selves, you will be inclined to adopt the opinion, that, in cases in which mercury lias been employed in the treatment of local inflam- mation, salivation is to be looked upon more as the result of the relief of the inflammation to a certain degree than as its primary cause. For instance, suppose you are called to treat a case of acute enteritis or hepatitis ; you give ten grains of calomel two or three times a day, and find that day after day passes without any appear- ance of salivation. Another practitioner is called in, who bleeds the patient, and this is almost immediately followed by the appearance of salivation and relief. My friend, Staff-Surgeon Marshall, who is intimately conversant with the diseases of India, has informed me that he has never known a casein which abscess actually formed in the substance ofthe liver, in which salivation could be produced; and that \v\\cn the patient became salivated, he believed it to be a decidedly irritating; they cause serous discharges, but not proper defecation. Alone I have found them of no benefit; following calo.-. mel, they answer a better purpose. — B.] IS*](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0219.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
