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
I am sorry, however, to add, that where bleeding has not been indicated,
I have seldom been able to afford much relief by medicine in this
state of consumption. I have used alternately the most gentle, and
the most powerful vegetable and metallic tonics to no purpose. Even
arsenic has failed in my hands of affording the least alleviation of
the hectic fever. I conceive the removal of this fever to be the great
desideratum in the cure of consumption; and should it be found, after
all our researches, to exist only in exercise, it will be no departure
from a law of nature, for I believe there are no diseases produced by
equal degrees of chronic debility, in which medicines are of any more
efficacy, than they are in the hectic fever of the pulmonary consumption.
I proceed now to speak of the palliative remedies which are proper in the
III. Or TYPHUS STATE of the pulmonary consumption.
The first of these are STIMULATING MEDICINES. However just the
complaints of Dr. Fothergill may be against the use of balsams in the
inflammatory and mixed states of consumption, they appear to be not only
safe, but useful likewise, in mitigating the symptoms of weak morbid
action in the arterial system. I have therefore frequently prescribed
opium, the balsam of copaivæ, of Peru, the oil of amber, and different
preparations of turpentine and tar, in moderate doses, with obvious
advantage. Garlic, elixir of vitriol, the juice of dandelion, a strong
tea made of horehound, and a decoction of the inner bark of the wild
cherry tree[27], also bitters of all kinds, have all been found safe
and useful tonics in this state of consumption. Even the Peruvian bark
and the cold bath, so often and so generally condemned in consumptions,
are always innocent, and frequently active remedies, where there is
a total absence of inflammatory diathesis in this disease. The bark
is said to be most useful when the consumption is the consequence of
an intermitting fever, and when it occurs in old people. With these
remedies should be combined
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