First lines of the practice of physic (Volume 2).

  • William Cullen
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First lines of the practice of physic (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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    the remedies already mentioned, to employ stimulants of various kinds ; but I am disposed to think them generally hurtful; and they must be so, •wherever the fulness of the vessels, and the impetus of the blood in these, is to be dimi- nished. Upon this principle it is therefore agreed, that stimulants are absolutely improper in what is supposed to be a sanguine apoplexy ; but they are commonly supposed to be proper in the serous. If, however, we be right in al- ledging that this also commonly depends upon a plethoric state of the blood-vessels of the brain, stimulants must b«k equally improper in the one case as in the other. 1136.] It maybe argued from the almost universal em- ployment of stimulants, and sometimes with seeming ad- vantage, that they may not be so hurtful as my notions of the causes of apoplexy lead me to suppose. But this ar- gument is, in several respects, fallacious; and particularly in this, that in a disease which, under every management, often proceeds so quickly to a fatal termination, the effects of remedies are not to be easily ascertained. 1137.] I have now mentioned the several remedies which I think adapted to the cure of apoplexy arising from com- pression, and should next proceed to treat of the cure of apoplexy arising from those causes that directly destroy the mobility of the nervous power. But many of those causes arc often so powerful, and thereby so suddenly fatal in their effects, as hardly to allow of time for the use of remedies; and such cases, therefore, have been so seldom the subjects of practice, that the proper remedies are not so well ascer- tained as to enable me to say much of them here. 1138.] When, however, the application of the causes, (1114.) is not so powerful as immediately to kill, and in- duces only an apoplectic state, some efforts are to be made to obviate the consequences, and to recover the patient; and even in some cases where the causes referred to, from the ceasing of the pulse and of respiration, and from a coldness coming upon the body, have induced an appear- ance of death ; yet, if these appearances have not continued long, there may be means of recovering the persons to life and health. I cannot, indeed, treat this subject complete- ly ; but for the cure of apoplexy from several of the causes mentioned (1114.) shall offer the following general directions. 1. When a poison capable of producing apoplexy has been recently taken into the stomach, if a vomiting spon- taneously arises, it is to be encouraged ; or, if it does not
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