On the nature, causes, statistics, and treatment of erysipelas / by Peter Hinckes Bird.

  • Peter Hinckes Bird
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature, causes, statistics, and treatment of erysipelas / by Peter Hinckes Bird. 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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    different mode of treatment been followed, a somewhat more satisfac- tory result w'oidd be recorded. I may here briefly remark, that the treatment I recommend is that of free and steady support by alcoholic stimulants, hark and quinine, and early incisions when necessary, preceded, if the case is seen early, by the administration of an emetic and mercurial purgative. Two new remedies have lately been put forward—the perchloride of iron, and camomile. Mathey, in his thesis on the use of perchloride of iron, states that its action on erysipelas is evident, and the course of the disease is modified a short time after its administration. In fact, on the second day, and sometimes even on the first, M. Mathey has seen the disease become limited and circumscribed, and its further progress arrested. As to the duration of the disease, the effect of the perchloride is still very remarkable: not only is the progress of the erysipelas sensibly modified from the first few hours which follow the administra- tion of the medicine, but it is completely arrested ; the radical cure of the disease is obtained in a very short time. It was observed that in ten rather severe cases of erysipelas treated by the internal use of the perchloride of iron, three were cured in two days; three were cured in three days ; two were cured in four days ; one in five days; and one in seven days. It cannot, therefore, be denied that erysipelas is advan- tageously modified by tbe internal use of chloride of iron; that the cessation of the symptoms proper to erysipelas is sometimes very rapid after the administration of this medicine ; that in a series of ten obser- vations, made upon varied cases, this treatment never failed ; that even where its efficacy may be doubted, it has never given rise to any bad symptom ; and that when administered in the dose of thirty drops to a healthy subject, it has never given rise to any painful sensation, and has never produced any notable functional disturbance: even 100 have been given in certain exceptional cases. M. Aran believes that it would be vain to expect advantageous results from the administration of perchloride of iron in all cases of erysipelas. He is convinced that some cases of erysipelas will not yield to this remedy : as, for instance, the cases which occur in young, strong, and robust subjects of a san- guine temperament, and which are accompanied by a well marked inflammatory action. On the other hand, the cases of erysipelas which are developed in feeble, delicate subjects, of a well marked lymphatic or scrofulous temperament; in individuals already weakened by pre- vious diseases; the cases especially which exhibit, with well marked tendency to spread, the oedematous form ; and in which, even with a marked acceleration of the pulse, the arterial throbs are weak and easily depressed, or when fever is completely wanting, as happens some- times in old persons—these cases are remarkably modified, and often arrested in twenty-four, thirty-six, and forty-eight hours, by the
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