Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
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Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 2: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
3. VOMITS have been much commended by Dr. Read in this disease. From
their indiscriminate use in every state of consumption, I believe they
have oftener done harm than good. In cases where a patient objects to
bleeding, or where a physician doubts of its propriety, vomits may
always be substituted in its room with great advantage. They are said to
do most service when the disease is the effect of a catarrh.
4. NITRE, in moderate doses of ten or fifteen grains, taken three or
four times a day, has sometimes been useful in this disease; but it has
been only when the disease has appeared with inflammatory symptoms. Care
should be taken not to persevere too long in the use of this remedy,
as it is apt to impair the appetite. I have known one case in which it
produced an obstinate dyspepsia, and a disposition to the colic; but it
removed, at the same time, the symptoms of pulmonary consumption.
5. COLD and DRY AIR, when combined with the exercise of _walking_,
deserves to be mentioned as an antiphlogistic remedy. I have repeatedly
prescribed it in this species of the consumption with advantage, and
have often had the pleasure of finding a single walk of two or three
miles in a clear cold day, produce nearly the same diminution of the
force and frequency of the pulse, as the loss of six or eight ounces of
blood.
I come now to treat of the palliative remedies which are proper in the
II. Or HECTIC STATE of consumption. Here we begin to behold the disease
in a new and more distressing form than in the state which has been
described. There is in this state of consumption the same complication
of inflammatory and typhus diathesis which occurs in the typhoid and
puerperile fevers, and of course the same difficulty in treating it
successfully; for the same remedies do good and harm, according as the
former or latter diathesis prevails in the system.
All that I shall say upon this state is, that the treatment of it
should be accommodated to the predominance of inflammatory or typhus
symptoms, for the hectic state presents each of them alternately every
week, and sometimes every day to the hand, or eye of a physician. When a
hard pulse with acute pains in the side and breast occur, bleeding and
other remedies for the inflammatory state must be used; but when the
disease exhibits a predominance of typhus symptoms, the remedies for
that state to be mentioned immediately, should be prescribed in moderate
doses. There are several palliative medicines which have been found
useful in the hectic state, but they are such as belong alike to the
other two states; and therefore will be mentioned hereafter in a place
assigned to them.
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