Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![and gout; in urticaria, eczema, and other skin diseases ; in dropsy; in various important affections of the liver, kidneys, &c.; and as a sequela to the different eruptive and continued fevers. The treatment should consist in the exhibition of full doses of sulphate of soda with sulphuric acid (F. 143), or of castor oil, until the bowels are thoroughly cleared. Then, according to circumstances, recourse is to be had to quinine and iron (F. 380) ; or to the mineral acids (F. 376, 3*18, 379); or to quinine, steel, and arsenic (F. 381); or to phosphate of iron, &c. (F. 405, 406). A good nourishing diet, fresh fruit or vegetables, a fair allowance of stout or ale or wine, and rest in a pure atmosphere, will be indispensable. The oil of turpentine, in small but frequently repeated doses (F. 50), has been strongly recommended where there is internal hemorrhage. A tincture prepared from the inner bark of the common larch (Larix Europsea), administered in fifteen-minim doses every three or four hours, would at least prove more agreeable. As a rule, however, I feel more confidence in a mixture (F. 103) containing the gallic and aromatic sulphuric acids. IV. HYDROPHOBIA. Of the diseases which may arise from inoculation with poisons gener- ated by unhealthy animals, hydrophobia £'T8wp = water + (pufiiw — to dread], or rabies [Eabio= to rave], is the most remarkable as well as the most distressing. It is, indeed, a fearful malady; not only on ac- count of its almost universal fatality, but also because of the horrible suffering it gives rise to. Rabies is generally believed to occur sponta- neously in the canine and perhaps in the feline races; but it is not un- likely that this opinion is opposed to truth. Certainly, the disease is only communicated by inoculation with the saliva to other animals and to man. Pathology.—The symptoms, together with the absence of any constant structural change, seem to show that this disease depends upon some peculiar alteration in the blood; this alteration affecting the nervous system, and especially the medulla oblongata with the three divisions of the eighth pair. The poison, when absorbed, may reasonably be supposed to slowly effect some change in the blood, while at the same time the morbid material increases in quantity and virulence. The pro- cess by which this occurs has been compared to that which happens in fermentation. According to some authors, a double zymosis or fermen- tation takes place ; first in the part wounded, and secondly in the system at large. The question is often asked,—Is the disease due to the slow operation of the poison on the sj^stem, or to the mental anxiety which the patient undergoes from the consciousness of his danger ? Although our knowledge of the nature of this affection is very imperfect, still I know of no reason for believing that anxiety will give rise to hydrophobia any more than it will produce variola or syphilis. But just as we meet with imaginary cases of the latter (syphiliphobia), so we read of mental or](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21079961_0085.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
