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
Again, during the month of June there were treated by the eclectic
physicians, when the disease had reached its maximum intensity, and
many of the patients being reached by the physicians only in the
collapsed stage, 764 cases of cholera, with a large number of choleroid
diseases not fully reported. During this month, the mortality with all
physicians was necessarily greater than either in the preceding or
subsequent month. Including then the month of May, the aggregate to
July 1st is 1,094 cases, with a loss of only 36, which is considerably
less than four per cent. (being 3.28); while the mortality of the old
school cholera practice being 26 per cent. in May, must have risen to
at least 50 per cent. in June, when the ratio of mortality was more
than doubled with all physicians. The _Western Lancet_ for July, 1849,
issued while the cholera was still raging, and speaking in behalf
of the allopathic physicians, observes, "that of the cases of true
cholera, with rice-water discharges, at least one-half the cases in
this city, as everywhere else, proved fatal." This confession of the
_Lancet_, edited by a thoroughgoing allopathic physician, advocating
the interests of that school, must be regarded below rather than above
the actual allopathic loss. Now, admitting the _Lancet's_ correctness,
and taking into account the aggregate loss of only 36 by the eclectic
physicians in treating 1,094 cases of "true cholera," we ask what
must have been the loss by the allopathic school of practice to have
brought the average percentage of all schools up to 50 per cent., as
affirmed by the _Western Lancet_? If the cholera hospitals be included
in exhibiting the results of the different modes of practice, it will
appear from the reports that the total number of deaths, compared to
the admissions, was, under the eclectic treatment, 23-1/3 per cent.;
under the allopathic treatment, 60 per cent. This percentage is
confined exclusively to the three cholera hospitals reported.
In the report of 1832, by Dr. Atkins, it appears "that the total number
of cases" of cholera in this city, New York, "including those in the
hospitals, as well as those reported to the Board of Health, had been
5,835 on the 1st of September. The total number of deaths by cholera to
September 1st was 2,996." More than one-half died. "Dr. Buell reports
the success," says Professor Clark, "of sixty-grain doses of calomel
in one of the New York hospitals, as 93 deaths in 100 cases;" very
remarkable success! the largest mortality in the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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