Asiatic Cholera: A treatise on its origin, pathology, treatment, and cure — John Shaqi
Asiatic Cholera: A treatise on its origin, pathology, treatment, and cureWhitney, Elijah
History
Asiatic Cholera: A treatise on its origin, pathology, treatment, and cure
Whitney, Elijah
Cholera
the brain--the mental faculties in some cases being retained till
the close of life;--in other cases feeble, weak, and much impaired.
On the accession of the spasms, the vomiting--and the purging--the
disease may be considered as being fully developed, and the crisis at
hand, which, in a few hours, must decide the fate of the patient. Its
progress is now rapid, and must speedily terminate either favorably
or unfavorably. If the result be unfavorable, the patient may die with
all these symptoms distinctly and strongly marked. If the termination,
however, be favorable, these violent symptoms soon yield, and seem
to be materially relieved; yet, though these indications favor the
return of normal power--the weakness, the cessation of the pulse, the
coldness and blueness of the surface, and the sepulchral expression of
the countenance, clearly show that a few hours must close the scene. To
many death thus often comes calmly and quietly, without any struggle to
mark the precise time of this life's departure.
"If the patient," says an eminent author, "should happily survive the
cold stage, the disease may terminate by a rapid recovery, or it may
pass into the second or febrile stage." The former is the more usual
course in India, the latter in Europe. The first symptom of returning
health is shown by the patient falling into a sleep of unusual
soundness, during which the respiration becomes light and easy,
the pulse freer, while a gentle, warm perspiration bedews the whole
body. This grateful pause in the disease appears to be the result of
the returning powers of life, uninfluenced by medicine, for it often
occurs where none has been given. After this balmy slumber the patient
awakes refreshed, and often recovers so rapidly, that in the natives
of India it almost resembles a restoration after syncope. In all the
Presidencies, indeed, and especially in Bengal, the recovery of the
European has, in general, been followed by a stage of reaction, usually
slight, but in some cases assuming the form of the bilious remittent
fever of the country, which has occasionally terminated fatally.
In most cases, however, the reaction is more considerable, and the
patient, in a few hours after the subsidence of the cold stage, labors
under a severe form of fever, resembling the typhoid. During the first
few hours after the febrile reaction commences the tongue is white,
but it quickly becomes brown and dry, while black sordes incrust the
teeth and lips. The eye becomes deeply injected and red, the cheek pale
or flushed, the pulse rapid, and the temperature of the body a little
above the natural standard. The patient, either delirious or comatose,
then lies in a state resembling the last stage of the severest typhoid
fever of this country. This struggle usually lasts from four to eight
days, when the symptoms either gradually yield, or death ensues. In a
few mild cases the fever assumes an intermittent type, or sometimes a
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