A collection of facts interspersed with observations on the nature, causes, and cure of the yellow fever : in a series of letters, addressed to the inhabitants of the United States : part I / by Thomas Ruston, M.D.
- Ruston, Thomas, approximately 1739-1804
- Date:
- 1804
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A collection of facts interspersed with observations on the nature, causes, and cure of the yellow fever : in a series of letters, addressed to the inhabitants of the United States : part I / by Thomas Ruston, M.D. 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.)
15/74
![vomiting of black bile, and does not the disorder seem to have been almost entirely lodged in the stomach, for, upon the repeated discharges of bile from that organ, is not only that, but all the other syptoms relieved ? What rea- son is there to think, that the disease had got hold of the system, much less is there any reason to think that it was infectious ? The violent head ache, and the great lassitude, are easily accounted for, from the violent sick- ness occasioned by the great foulness of stomach, but there was no fever. As to the remedy he made use of, it required no physician to inform him of that; for every old nurse knows, that after a violent fit of vomiting, a little weak soup or beef tea, well seasoned with salt, is as good a thing to settle the stomach as any thing that can be thought of. Sprinkling rooms with water or vinegar, and fumigating them with burjiing sulphur or brim- stone, in order, to purify them from foul air, which he recommends, have long been practised. But a much better method has been invented, by fumigating with the vapour of nitric acid.* » * In the years 173.) or 1T9C\, Dr. James Carmichael Smj th, pbysicisn ex- traordinary to his Britannic Majesty, suggested a process for determining the effect of the fames of nitric acid in destroying contagion. The utensils and materials provided for the purpose were the following: A quantity of fine sand, about two dozen of gusot earthen pipkins, as many common red cups, some long slips of glass to be used as spatulas, or a quantity of concentrated vitri- olic acid, and a quantity of pure nitre (nitrat of pot:;.-,].). The process was conducted in the following manner : 1st. All the ports and scuttles of the Union Hospital ship, on board of which the experiment was made, were shut up ; the sand, which had been previously heated in iron pots, was then scooped out into the pipkins, by means of an iron ladle, and in this heated sand in each pipkin, a small tea-cm- , con- taining about half an ounce of the sulphuric acid; to which, after it had](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21152160_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
