Facts and conclusions as to the use of alcoholic stimulants in typhus fever / by W.T. Gairdner.

  • Gairdner, W. T. (William Tennant), Sir, 1824-1907.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts and conclusions as to the use of alcoholic stimulants in typhus fever / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    made to a more correct doctrine on the subject, though further researches are still required; 6th, That there is reason to think that in most hospitals, as well as in private practice, a very large needless expenditure is incurred through neglect of these facts—a consideration which, though secondary in importance to others, is by no means to he set aside as irrelevant. The facts from which I propose to attempt to prove these positions are—1. The cases treated by myself, or under my immediate superintendence, in the Grlasgow Fever Hospital, since the middle of November, 1862; 2. The entire aggregate of cases treated in the years 1861 and 1862, these years being selected merely as being the nearest in point of time to my own appointment as physician, though only to a very slight extent (in the end of 1862) influenced by my own practice, and there- fore in all probability fairly representative of the existing state of opinion and practice in Glasgow. I will add, that nothing in my experience leads me to believe that the practice in Glas- gow is materially different from that usual in Edinburgh, or in Scotland generally, in this respect; while I am fully convinced that the tendency to what I regard as an excess is far greater in London, and probably in many parts of England, than it is in either Edinburgh or Glasgow. The cases treated by myself are roughly divided into three series in the order of time. Although the numbers in these series are probably too small, separately considered, to give a secure basis for numerical analj^sis, I have thought it desirable to preserve the distinction, partly because it illustrates a very remarkable increase in the mortality of the fever in the middle period (April to June, 1863), and partly because the returns were carefully completed in private memoranda left me by mv dear friend and fellow-labourer the late Dr. Hamilton, whose early death, from this very disease, typhus fever, has saddened all who knew him, as with the sense of an irreparable loss. To his'earnest love of his profession, to his simplicity and truth- fulness, not less than to his great quickness in receiving and applying new ideas without prejudice, I am more indebted than I can possibly express; and without his efficient assistance it is very certain that the facts in this paper could not have been presented in a satisfactory form. 3’he l>asis thus obtained was