Cases of cholera collected at Paris : in the month of April, 1832, in the wards of MM. Andral and Louis, at the Hospital La Pitié / by James Jackson, Jr.

  • Jackson, James, Jr., 1810-1834.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases of cholera collected at Paris : in the month of April, 1832, in the wards of MM. Andral and Louis, at the Hospital La Pitié / by James Jackson, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    flection it will be obvious that cases of that description can rarely be met with in a hospital, unless in military establishments. In these, arrangements may be made for the immediate removal of the sick to a hospital on the first moment of seizure. If this work professed to explain many doubtful questions respect- ing cholera, to decide on its causes, its intimate nature, and its treat- ment, it might attract more regard. It professes only to be a con- tribution toward the natural history of the disease. The natural history is the first, I had almost said the first and the last thing, to be studied in every disease. This contribution may not enable any one to decide on the proximate cause of cholera. It does not profess to offer any mode of treatment, which can be relied on in severe cases of the disease. On the contrary, it rather shows the inefficiency of the methods tried in those cases. One of the most important inferences to be drawn from these cases is the frequent occurrence of pneumonitis, often latent, after reaction. This circumstance would have been overlooked, unless examinations after death had been carefully made in the parts not suspected, as well as in those which had been. They may still pass unnoticed during life, unless we employ percussion and aus- cultation in those cases in which reaction is not followed promptly by convalescence. That no one be unduly discouraged by these and similar reports, of the failure of remedies in the cholera hospitals of Europe and this country, I wish to avail myself of the opportunity to add a few re- marks on the treatment. The English practitioners, who became familiar with this disease in India, have given more encouraging accounts of the effects of remedies, than any physicians have done from their own experience in this country or in Europe. Whence the difference 1 Has the disease really been more severe; or has it changed its character, since it left the warm country, in which it commenced its career ? Both these things may be true, but they have not been shown to be so. If there be any difference, it cer- tainly appears to me that the disease has more rarely been short and rapid in its course, since it entered Europe, than it was in India.