Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
Science
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
It would be easy for me to mention cases in which every symptom that
has been enumerated has occurred within my own observation. I wish them
to be committed to memory by young practitioners; and if they derive the
same advantages from attending to them, which I have done, I am sure
they will not regret the trouble they have taken for that purpose. It
is probable, while a morbid state of the lungs is supposed to be the
proximate cause of this disease, they will not derive much reputation or
emolument from curing it in its forming stage; but let them remember,
that in all attempts to discover the causes and cures of diseases, which
have been deemed incurable, a physician will do nothing effectual until
he acquire a perfect indifference to his own interest and fame.
The remedies for consumption, in this stage of the disease, are simple
and certain. They consist in a desertion of all the remote and exciting
causes of the disorder, particularly sedentary employments, damp or cold
situations, and whatever tends to weaken the system. When the disease
has not yielded to this desertion of its remote and exciting causes,
I have recommended the _cold bath_, _steel_, and _bark_ with great
advantage. However improper, or even dangerous, these remedies may be
after the disease assumes an inflammatory or hectic type, and produces
an affection of the lungs, they are perfectly safe and extremely useful
in the state of the system which has been described. The use of the bark
will readily be admitted by all those practitioners who believe the
pulmonary consumption to depend upon a scrophulous diathesis. Should
even the lungs be affected by scrophulous tumours, it is no objection
to the use of the bark, for there is no reason why it should not be
as useful in scrophulous tumours of the lungs, as of the glands of
the throat, provided it be given before those tumours have produced
inflammation; and in this case, no prudent practitioner will ever
prescribe it in scrophula, when seated even in the external parts of the
body. To these remedies should be added a diet moderately stimulating,
and gentle exercise. I shall hereafter mention the different species of
exercise, and the manner in which each of them should be used, so as
to derive the utmost advantage from them. I can say nothing of the use
of salt water or sea air in this stage of the consumption, from my own
experience. I have heard them commended by a physician of Rhode-Island;
and if they be used before the disease has discovered itself in
pulmonary affections, I can easily conceive they may do service.
If the simple remedies which have been mentioned have been neglected, in
the first stage of the disease, it generally terminates, in different
periods of time, in pulmonary affections, which show themselves under
one of the three following forms:
1. A fever, accompanied by a cough, a hard pulse, and a discharge of
blood, or mucous matter from the lungs.
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