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
seen that the rapid changes in the blood, and the consequent direct
tendency to congestion, are the proper and distinguishing features of
the disease;--and hence the diminution of animal heat and general loss
of temperature and their consequent effect, impeding the circulation,
depressing and prostrating the nervous power--impairing and paralyzing
the respiratory organs--suspending the functions of the liver and
kidneys--enfeebling the action of the heart, and causing the capillary
vessels of the mucous surfaces to pour off the serous fluid from the
blood, and every muscle and tissue of the system with great rapidity,
essentially constitute the phenomena of the cholera;--and that the
constantly increasing augmentation of the poison and its intensified
effects, measure the malignity, the violence, and the rapidity of the
disease. Is there, then, any tendency in bleeding to arrest this rapid
process of disease so disorganizing, depreciating, and enfeebling to
the vital life-sustaining fluid, the blood? Can abstracting a portion
of it, however large, suspend the poison, or its activity, or even
check its progress in its rapid course and fatal termination? Can it
have, under its depressing and depleting process, any tendency or
power to relieve the congestion that is taking place, or change in any
good degree the poisonous principle which is now generally admitted
to exist in the blood, and to be the sole and efficient cause of its
altered character and condition? The poison, once introduced into the
blood, like the leaven hid in three measures of meal, will continue
its activity, increasing its energy, and multiplying its forces, till
the whole circulation becomes affected, and its life-sustaining power
is destroyed and utterly lost, unless, by the exhibition of some
remedial agent, it shall be promptly arrested in its progress, and
suspended and eliminated. Again we ask, Will calomel fulfill any of
the indications required? Has it any influence or power to arrest this
disease, to quiet the nervous system, relieve the cramps, or restore
warmth to the body? Its specific action, so far as known, can have no
tendency whatever to relieve the system in any essential particular,
or stay the progress of disease, or delay its inevitable result, if it
remain unsubdued by the action of other remedies. Its action upon the
liver, however prompt it may be, is only of a secondary importance. The
primary cause must be overcome, its activity and energy suspended and
the system generally relieved, or there is little hope in the case.
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