Report on a new method of treating diphtheria / by Charles Smith.

  • Charles Smith
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on a new method of treating diphtheria / by Charles Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ] 1 the family having been attacked, I thought it advisable to thoroughly disinfect the house at the same time, so that in addition to the usual methods of disinfection, I ordered that recommended by Dr. J. Lewis Smith, in his article on Diphtheria, in the first vol. of Keating's Cyclopaedia of Children's Diseases, page 654, which consists of the evaporation, by means of a spirit lamp, of water in which some of the 1-1-8 mixture has been placed. There was some difficulty in procuring the spirit lamp, and as no other method of evaporation could be devised, I recommended dipping rags in the mixture without water, and strewing them about the room, and in the bed. It is unnecessary to follow out the case in detail: the continu- ance of the treatment was only secured by constant watching on my part; I even had to carry the carbolic acid with me on one occasion to ensure its being used; the other ingredients were sometimes present, sometimes not. At one time, I thought a few hours the outside limit one could fix for him to live ; but at length, after ten days' treatment, he recovered, as much to my surprise as that of his friends, cured, as I thought, by the mercurial ointment, possibly aided to some extent by the borax, for I did not then dream that any part of the result could be due to the inhalation of the vapour thus carelessly applied. After such a successful termination to a case apparently hopeless, I naturally treated all those which came under my care at that time in the same way, and for a while with uniform success. So convinced had I become of the value of the mercurial inunction, that a paper for this Society had been contemplated, in which the cure of the disease was to be explained on these lines. But at length, my theory received a rude shock. A lady over 30, a relative of my Own, who had not been exposed to any known cause of infection, consulted me for a sore throat. This was at first trifling in degree, and not definite in its characteristics —one of those cases which are doubtless repeatedly passed over as ulcerated throat; glycerine and tannin had been used, and I recommended its continuance, giving borax also at short intervals. In spite of this, the disease progressed, and all doubt as to its nature was soon at an end. The mercurial inunction was now used freely, and borax blown down the throat every half-hour day ;md night, besides small quantities being taken in the intervals. Her anxiety prevented her from sleeping, and in spite of advice