Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
History
Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
From the more malignant state of the fever, and from the fears and
prejudices that were excited against bleeding and mercury by means of the
newspapers, the success of those remedies was much less than in the years
1793 and 1794. Hundreds refused to submit to them at the _time_, and in
the _manner_, that were necessary to render them effectual. From the
publications of a number of physicians, who used the lancet and mercury
in their greatest extent, it appears that they lost but one in ten of all
they attended. It was said of several practitioners who were opposed to
copious bleeding, that they lost a much smaller proportion of their
patients with the prevailing fever. Upon inquiry, it appeared they had
lost many more. To conceal their want of success, they said their
patients had died of other diseases. This mode of deceiving the public
began in 1793. The men who used it did not recollect, that it is less in
favour of a physician's skill to lose patients in pleurisies, colics,
hæmorrhages, contusions, and common remittents, than in a malignant
yellow fever.
Dr. Sayre attended fifteen patients in the disease, all of whom recovered
by the plentiful use of the depleting remedies. His place of residence
being remote from those parts of the city in which the fever prevailed
most, prevented his being called to a greater number of cases.
A French physician, who bled and purged _moderately_, candidly
acknowledged that he saved but three out of four of his patients.
In the city hospital, where bleeding was sparingly used, and where the
physicians depended chiefly upon a salivation, more than one half died of
all the patients who were admitted. It is an act of justice to the
physicians of the hospital to add, that many, perhaps most of their
patients, were admitted _after_ the first day of the disease.
I cannot conclude this comparative view of the success of the different
modes of treating the yellow fever, without taking notice, that the
stimulating mode, as recommended by Dr. Kuhn and Dr. Stevens, in the year
1793, was deserted by every physician in the city. Dr. Stevens
acknowledged the disease to require a different treatment from that
which it required in the West-Indies; Dr. Kuhn adopted the lancet and
mercury in his practice; and several other physicians, who had written
against those remedies, or who had doubted of their safety and efficacy,
in 1793, used them with confidence, and in the most liberal manner, in
1797.
In the histories I have given of the yellow fevers of 1793 and 1794, I
have scattered here and there a few observations upon their degrees of
danger, and the signs of their favourable or unfavourable issue. I shall
close the present history, by collecting those observations into one
view, and adding to them such other signs as have occurred to me in
observing this epidemic.
Signs of moderate danger, and a favourable issue of the yellow fever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account