Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the AuthorRush, Benjamin
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Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 4: The Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author
Rush, Benjamin
Medicine; Yellow fever -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia
A heavy rain, accompanied with a good deal of wind, on the 28th of
September, and a frost on the night of the 7th of October, gave a
considerable check to the fever.
But few cases of it came under my care. Having perceived the same
disposition in nature to relieve herself by the pores, that I observed in
the years 1802 and 1803, my remedies were the same as in the latter year,
and attended with the same success. Dr. Caldwell and Dr. Stewart, whose
practice was extensive in Southwark, informed me, those remedies had been
generally successful in their hands.
The only new medicine that the experience of this year suggested in this
disease, was for one of its most distressing and dangerous symptoms, that
is, the vomiting which occurs in its second stage. Dr. Physick
discovered, that ten drops of the spirit of turpentine, given every two
hours, in a little molasses, or syrup, or sweet oil, effectually checked
it in several instances, in patients who afterwards recovered. It was
administered with equal success in a case which came under my care, after
an absence of pulse, and a coldness of the extremities had taken place.
Dr. Church informed me that he gave great relief to the sick in the city
hospital, by this medicine, by prescribing it in glysters, as well as by
the mouth, in distressing affections of the stomach and bowels.
Dr. Stewart observed that all those persons who had been affected by the
yellow fever in former years, had mild remittents in the same situations
that others had the prevailing epidemic in a malignant form.
In one of four bodies the doctor examined, he found six, and in another
three intussusceptions of the intestines, without any signs of
inflammation. He discovered the common marks of disease from this fever
in other parts of those bodies.
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