Reports on epidemic cholera : drawn up at the desire of the Cholera Committee of the Royal College of Physicians / by William Baly and William W. Gull.

  • William Baly
Date:
1854
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports on epidemic cholera : drawn up at the desire of the Cholera Committee of the Royal College of Physicians / by William Baly and William W. Gull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    member of the professionmay adduce ; but the Committee have a con- fident hope that valuable and conclusive results, in regard to at least some of the disputed points, might be obtained by collecting and comparing the observations of hospital physicians, and the many other members of the College. Such a method of inquiry appears to be especially applicable, and indeed indispensable, in any endeavour to estimate the relative values of the various modes of treating Cholera, respecting which the evidence is so conflicting. It seems desirable that every member of the College who has -V the necessary opportunity, should submit one or more remedies to a systematic tr ial in a series of cases. Tiie therapeutic history of Cholera leads us to guard the above sug- gestions, by expressing our conviction that for empirical inquiry to be pursued to a good end, the most favourable opportunities are required for noting the state of the patient at the commencement, and different stages of the treatment, by which alone discrepancies in the results can be reconciled. Again, the employment, without definite scope, of one remedy after another, with the vague hope of at last finding a specific, is to be deprecated, not only because it can lead to no good result, but be- cause it deprives the patient of that assistance which established experience affords. The state of the patient in the collapse of Cholera is so unfavour- able to the absorption of medicines, that even if we knew the remedy in itself most appropriate, we could not anticipate great results from its administration by the mouth at this period. Every consideration of this formidable malady urges upon us the paramount importance of obviating the causes which give rise to it, and of arresting the symptoms at the onset. The application of heat to the surface has been Externaljiieans, ]g^j.ggjy t^jed. The hot bath, alone, or Avith mustard or salt, &c., the vapour bath and the hot-air bath, have been principally employed. It appears to be the uniform expe- rience of tlie profession, that in collapse these means are but of little value. When the depression of the circulation is great, and the surface cold and clammy, although heat may be impai'tcd to the body, it rarely excites reaction in the system itself; on the contrary, it is op- pressive to the patient and increases the exhaustion. These means are better adapted to an earlier stage of the disease, or when it is less
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