Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
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Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
If it be the effect of poisonous substances taken into the stomach, or
of worms in the bowels, the cure should be begun by emetics, purges, and
anthelmintic medicines.
Where patients are unable to swallow, from the teeth of the upper and
lower jaw pressing upon each other, a tooth or two should be extracted,
to open a passage for our medicines into the throat. If this be
impracticable or objected to, they should be injected by way of glyster.
In the locked jaw which arises from the extraction of a tooth, an
instrument should be introduced to depress the jaw. This has been done
by a noted English dentist in London, with success.
As the habit of diseased action often continues after the removal of its
causes, and as some of the remote causes of this disease are beyond the
reach of medicine, such remedies should be given as are calculated, by
their stimulating power, to overcome the morbid or spasmodic action of
the muscles. These are:
1. OPIUM. It should be given in large and frequent doses. Dr. Streltz
says he has found from one to two drachms of an alkali, taken in the
course of a day, greatly to aid the action of the opium in this disease.
2. WINE. This should be given in quarts, and even gallons daily. Dr.
Currie relates a case of a man in the infirmary of Liverpool, who was
cured of tetanus, by drinking nearly a quarter cask of Madeira wine.
Dr. Hosack speaks in high terms of it, in a letter to Dr. Duncan, and
advises its being given without any other stimulating medicine.
3. ARDENT SPIRITS. A quack in New-England has lately cured tetanus, by
giving ardent spirits in such quantities as to produce intoxication.
Upon being asked his reason for this strange practice, he said, he had
always observed the jaw to fall in drunken men, and any thing that would
produce that effect, he supposed to be proper in the locked jaw.
4. The BARK has of late years been used in this disease with success. I
had the pleasure of first seeing its good effects in the case of Colonel
Stone, in whom a severe tetanus followed a wound in the foot, received
at the battle of Germantown, in October, 1777.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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