A new mode of treating puerperal fever / by Charles Bell.

  • Bell, Charles.
Date:
[1872]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new mode of treating puerperal fever / by Charles Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the bowels are freely moved ; and thirty drops of the muriated tincture of iron every three hours. The vagina to be washed out several times a day with Condy’s red fluid and tepid water, and a linseed poultice applied to the abdomen. If this treatment is regularly and fully carried out, and not in the timid, partial way which many practitioners do in erysipelas, and then undervalue the treatment, I feel certain it will give the best chance of cure to the patients. Dr James Young believed that great benefit was obtained from using calomel in the manner described by Dr Bell; he had lately suf¬ fered from an attack of erysipelas, and been treated with the tincture of the muriate of iron and calomel, in doses of a twelfth of a grain, with the best results. He had never seen head symptoms in puerperal fever, and he looked upon diarrhoea as one of the most serious com¬ plications you could have in that disease. Dr Bell regarded puerperal fever as a disease sui generis, and that there may be complications occurring in it as in any other disease. The tincture of the muriate of iron he believed lowered both the pulse and the temperature. The efficacy of the powder depends greatly on the manner in which it is compounded, and the regularity with which it is given. When these have been properly attended to, he has never found it fail to move the bowels, and to diminish fever; but if they are neglected it is not surprising that it should cause disappointment. 1’IUNTED BY OLIVER AND BOYD, EDINBURGH. 1 t