Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair, surgeon general of British Guiana ; edited by John Davy, inspector general of army hospitals, etc.

  • Blair, Daniel.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of the last yellow fever epidemic of British Guiana / by Daniel Blair, surgeon general of British Guiana ; edited by John Davy, inspector general of army hospitals, etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    127/290 (page 105)
    Local bleeding, however, was frequently requisite as subsidiary treatment; and sometimes in tlie first stage, when the tension of the pulse was extreme, and there threatened local congestion, venesection was admissable. But in all cases the more economical the expenditure of blood, the better. When there was much suffusion of face, and injection of eyes, and the frontal headache was very severe, then a few ounces of blood from the temporal artery gave great relief. Sometimes, however, the mere ijicision gave immediate relief to all the head symptoms without a drop of blood being drawn. In epigastric tenderness cupping will relieve it, as well as the concomitant irritability of stomach and fieriness of tongue. In this case also little blood need be taken. Frequently all the gastric symptoms disappear with the application of the exhausted glass, even before the scarificator is used. In all cases the lancet or cupping instrument should be used merely to meet some imminent symptom, to remove some inflammatory or congested complication, to render the disease pure, and prepare the system for the reception of the specific treatment. Blood-letting, thus limited, and in any shape, is admissible only in the first stage of the disease.* Antimonials, also, except in the simplex grade of the disease, or when there was little irritability of stomach, were highly prejudicial. From the analogy of jaundice many used the ni- tro-muriatic acid internally. The experiment, however, was seldom repeated by the same practitioner, for the exasperation of the stomach symptoms became extreme. branes of the brain, of which instances are recorded in foot-note p. 100. In those fevers, according to Drs. Jackson and Ferguson, the abstraction of blood largely was necessary and of decided benefit. Other instances are on record of yellow fever, both in the West Indies and in America, in which the abstraction of blood was mainly relied on as a remedial means, — ende- mics of the same type, more or less complicated with the phlegmasia or inflammation of some one particular organ.]—Ed. * [The above remarks are well adapted, I believe, to regulate the use of blood-letting in yellow fever, and are deserving, in consequence, of careful attention by the bedside of the patient. I am not aware that the abstraction of blood from the hcemorrhoidal veins has yet been had recourse to in this disease. It may be deserving of trial either by means of leeches applied to the verge of the anus, or by puncturing the hsemorrhoidal veins when protuberant. This mode of treatment has been suggested in a note I have received from Mr. Gulliver, founded on the supposition — a very probable one,— that in yellow fever, before the occur- rence of black vomit, there is accumulation of blood in the vena portae.]