A guide to therapeutics / by Robert Farquharson.

  • Farquharson, Robert, 1836-1918.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to therapeutics / by Robert Farquharson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    some measure a diuretic, increasing temporarily the excretion of chloride of sodium, and more permanently the elimination of urea, phosphoric and sulphuric acids by the urine. It is, •of course, the universal solvent, and its importance in the animal economy is shown by the fact that it constitutes about sixty-eight of the hundred parts which build up our entire bodily frame, and that five pints are given out from the body of one average-sized adult in the twenty-four hours. The urgent necessity for its purity is further proved by the leading part it has always taken in the spread of epidemics : for not only cholera, but enteric fever, has thus been largely propa- gated, whilst entozoa are thus introduced into the system, and the presence of other impurities may give rise to dysentery, diarrhoea, goitre, and yellow fever. Specific adulterations also, like lead, have frequently occasioned very pamful and even fatal attacks of illness. But we derive great benefit in practice from the impurity of mineral waters, deeply impregnated, as they -are, with various mineral ingredients, and which are met with m such profusion and variety both at home and abroad. Fashion, no less than the undoubted success attending their use, has recently brought these naturally adulterated waters promi- nently forward, and it is very essential that every practitioner should have some knowledge of their chief constituents and the principal health resorts where they can be partaken of in greatest perfection. Our present Hmits, however, will only permit a very bare enumeration of the principal classes into which mineral waters have been divided. 1st. We have the chalybeate, or ferruginous class, which contains iron in varying proportion, in the form either of car- bonate held in solution by carbonic acid gas, as at Spa, Tun- bridge Wells, and Harrogate ; or of sulphate, as at Brighton, Isle of Wight, &c. They are possessed of tonic properties ; some are hot and some are cold, and some, as at Mont Dor6, contain a minute quantity of arsenious acid ; and whilst we generally find them best borne as carbonate, we must be