The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania UniversityPeter, Robert
History
The History of the Medical Department of Transylvania University
Peter, Robert
Medicine -- Kentucky; Medicine -- Kentucky -- History; Transylvania University. Medical Department
Two cases may be quoted from his own paper in the _Transylvania
Medical Journal_, and from Doctor Yandell's _Memoir of Doctor Cooke_
in the _American Practitioner_ for July, 1875. "William Douglass, a
student of theology, nineteen years of age, took a tablespoonful
(about two ounces) every six hours for three days in succession,
having taken the same quantity the evening before; in all, thirteen
tablespoonfuls. He was in collapse when he took the first dose. On the
third morning after beginning this treatment his discharges were found
to have become thick and green, and Doctor Cooke thought he would have
recovered but for the indiscretion of his attendant, who had him to
walk across a large room from one bed to another more than once.
Hiccough came on, the patient became delirious, and died on the sixth
day. But another patient recovered about this time under similar
treatment, and still lives, I believe--a useful Episcopal clergyman,
and an illustration of the extent to which calomel may be employed in
some diseases without injury to health. Mr. Brittan, a young
theological student, took a tablespoonful of calomel soon after having
had several copious watery discharges. He was advised to repeat the
dose every six hours, until the watery discharges ceased. He took,
that day, four and on the next, three of these doses; the discharges
not ceasing until some time after the seventh dose had been taken. He
took, moreover, three similar doses during the same time--having
thrown up three. The _repeated doses_ were given immediately after the
regular ones were thrown up. Bilious discharges appeared on the
evening of the second day, and were kept up by tincture of aloes and
occasionally pills of aloes and rhubarb for a week. The patient was
somewhat salivated, but recovered. I saw him a number of years
afterwards in perfect health."
Doctor Yandell asserts in this memoir that in this "extraordinary
practice, Doctor Cooke was not less successful in the treatment of
cholera than his medical brethren in Lexington." But the fact was that
none were very successful and that as many as fifty died in a day of a
population of a little over six thousand.[51] The writer recollects
that Doctor Cooke only practiced in the earlier period of this famous
epidemic, having been disabled by a fall in attempting, in his hurry
to attend a professional call, to put on his coat while running down
stairs.
In another case of cholera which occurred at this time, as the present
writer was informed by the intelligent and truthful brother of the
young lady patient of Doctor Cooke, these large tablespoonful doses
passed through the bowels apparently unchanged, being discharged in
lumps as large as pullets' eggs, without being even dissolved. This
patient did not recover.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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