An improved mode of employing mercury by fumigation to the whole body, exemplified by cases of its success. ... in various obstinate diseases of the skin, and especially in syphilitic affections / by Jonathan Green.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An improved mode of employing mercury by fumigation to the whole body, exemplified by cases of its success. ... in various obstinate diseases of the skin, and especially in syphilitic affections / by Jonathan Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    14/16 (page 14)
    of the forehead, the whole of the left side of the face, and chin and nose, were covered with one continuous, elevated, tuberculous blotch, and the right side of the face was covered with the same in part. “ He had been so reduced by unsuccessful mercurial treat- ment, and other causes, that his life was considered in jeopardy in consequence of his great weakness and emaciation. He was advised to leave off all medical treatment and try a sojourn on the continent for a time, in hopes of some renovation from the change. It was on his return that he was advised to come to me; his holiday had done him much good, but the disease appeared as I have just stated. “The details of treatment in this case are so similar to the last, that it would be little short of a repetition to particularize. Suffice it to say, that he commenced the mercurial fumigations of the grey oxide, sometimes with the head inclosed in the apparatus, and sometimes not so included, according to the more or less mercurial influence, as indicated by the state of the mouth and constitutional depression. He had two attacks of painful diarrhoea, lasting a day or two each, occasioning some interruption of treatment. He had in all twenty-one mercurial fumigations, sometimes with the head included, and sometimes not so included, as before stated ; the regular pro- gressive amendment was so evident, and satisfactory, that the patient (himself a medical man) frequently said 'he was astonished; that it seemed little shoit of miraculous to him, having been so long ill, and that nothing before had seemed to touch his complaint, except mischievously.’ “ On leaving me, to again show himself to the gentleman who had recommended him to try the fumigations, he had become so strong as to walk about half the day without fa- tigue, his spirits had become joyous, the blotches on the limbs and trunk had merely left brownish stains in process of dis- appearance; the forehead and face had become so well, that when warm a stranger would not have known that anything had so lately been the matter with him. “ These twenty-one mercurial fumigations were taken be- tween the 23rcl of August and the 16th of September, with little interruption, and not a month under the treatment alto- gether. “ In the foregoing cases, I would have it remembered that they were both sent to me as test cases, for the trial of mer- curial fumigations alone. They were both sufficiently bad, as will be acknowledged, and not a particle of mercury was given internally in either case, or otherwise, save than by the fumi- gations.