Remarks on the history and etiology of cholera / by David Craigie.

Date:
[1833?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the history and etiology of cholera / by David Craigie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    7/50 (page 7)
    indeed a compilation from all other authors, gives a short and unsatisfactory definition of the disease, in which he merely mentions bilious, fetid, and atid vomiting and alvine dischar- ges, followed by thirst, sweat, interrupted pulse, and spasmodic contractions of the muscles of the hands and feet, but especially of the calves of the legs. In his therapeutic directions, how- ever, it is manifest that he had in view a very formidable dis- ease, in which, when the discharge was excessive, (a,asrgoc,) the pulse became very weak, the surface cold and moist, and the patient was tortured with hiccup, intense thirst, and spasms of the muscles. It is farther important to remark, that the copi- ousness of the discharge in one passage he ascribes to the ope- ration of a poison irritating the stomach and bowels, and draw- ing thither the fluids from the whole body. * In the short and rather desultory sketch given by Paul of Aegina no mention is made of bile or bilious matter; but the disease is designated as an extraordinary disturbance of the sto- mach, causing vomiting and purging; and in a passage in the second book on fainting (XsiKoOv/uaf he mentions that symptom as the consequence of cholera and diarrhoea and other excessive evacuations, f Alexander of Tralles, on the contrary, a physician who flou- rished towards the middle of the sixth century, under Justinian the Great, takes particular pains to rectify the mistake with re- gard to the nature of the fluids discharged in cholera. After stating that cholera is allowed by all to be a most acute distem- per, inducing remarkable faintness and extraordinary loss of power (zuraXvffiv a^ergov rqg <3ui/a/xswc,) and therefore admitting no delay, and demanding the most speedy assistance, he defines it as an inordinate disturbance of the stomach and bowels, (a/xsrgog v/.raea^ig y\ dia yaffrgog xai sf/jzrm 'yivof/jzvrj sv dnarg07rri xai xuxu- csi tov (S70{jJuyjt\j.') He then recommends that no one should ima- gine that the disease is so named, because it is wont to be occa- sioned entirely by bile; but since they must see that the whole matter discharged from the alimentary canal is excreted from the intestines; (aAA svsidri dia tuv evrsgav stiscogouv exxgivo/jjevriv rr\v dia yuggog ir^og <pego/Mvriv oA?jv) ; and as these were denominated by the ancients yfh.adzg, it is on this account that the disease is termed yoXzsa.l Whatever opinion be entertained on the justice of this ety- mology, it is impossible to deny that Alexander of Tralles gives in the passage here referred to a correct view of the source of the fluids discharged, and a view the justice of which has been con- * Azriov T/rga/3//3X/oa, iii. 10. f IlauAoii Alyivqrou Iargov agigou (3i(3\ iii. A0. 37> j A}.t£)uvdpov T^aAA/ayou (3i(3\ zQd x.itp. iv.