The pathology and treatment of Asiatic cholera, so called / by A.L. Cox.

  • Cox, Abm. L. (Abraham Lidden), 1800-1864.
Date:
1849
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology and treatment of Asiatic cholera, so called / by A.L. Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    This case proves analytically and synthetically that the disease is H dian'hcea wliich discharges the water of the blood—that the symp- tom called collapse is the result of the loss of this water—that its restitution restored health—that purging produced relapse; and lastly, it presents an instance of the most extraordinary and un- exampled delay in the congelation of the fibrine of the blood which probably has ever been recorded, or indeed has ever happened. It deserves to be remarked that cases of recoveiy more seldom take place after collapse in persons of robust and vigorous constitu- tions than in those of feebler and more spare habits, because in the ormer there is usually more fibrine, and a more rapid coagulation naturally occurs. Dr. Geo. Stewart Hawthorne, whose letters on the Cholera have recently been re-published in this city, declares that no corpulent person has ever recovered from collapse, and assigns the same reason or it. This opinion requhes, however, to be modified, as the result of case No. G sufficiently proves. Still there is no doubt that such recoveries are extremely rare. The practical use of these cases is to induce us to employ an energetic course to arrest the discharge, remembering that in this disease especially, the time is short, and that it is of vital con- sequence to anticipate the fatal coagulation of the blood to which the diarrhoea rapidly urges the case. What effect, then, can bleeding and purgatives exert, but to ac- celerate the fatal end ? When they have appeared to succeed, has it not been only in the very early stages of the case ? Or have they not been so combined with opiates, cordials, diluents, and astringents, that the recovery has been in spite, and not in consequence, of their employment ? In the writer's experience, or rather observation, calomel has always hastened the final and fatal result. Case 5th.—On Sunday the 3d of June, 1849, a gardener, set. 35 years, of temperate habits and spare person, walked to Bloomingdale