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.

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    cury, and converting it into gas, to surround the patient’s body. After this method we arrive at the beneficial results commonly obtained from the use of that medicine, but freed from the disagreeable or distressing effects sometimes pro- duced by its internal administration, and from all the needful confinement and restraints which are enjoined when the me- dicine is given in the customary way to influence the system through the stomach. In the majority of cases it is desirable that the dry gases, as the gas from mercury, should be ren- dered moist by the admixture of vapour, which is provided for in the construction of the apparatus just described. According to the process thus briefly brought forward, I assume to call it “ An improved Mode of applying Mer- curial Fumigations to tiie whole Body.” L am quite aware that more than half a century gone by mercurial fumi- gations were extolled for their efficiency in the treatment of Syphilis by medical authorities of high repute in this and other countries.* But the practice was never firmly based, owing to the imperfect way in which the apparatus was con- structed at various times and places, and the trouble attend- ing its use. Those drawbacks are now overcome. It was in the year 1822 that I first began to practise in London with the aid of a fumigatory establishment, and which I was encouraged to adopt by several of the leading members of the medical profession. I soon became surprised at the amount of good I was doing, even unaided by the assistance of medicine. This was more particuarly shown in chronic pains, intractable swellings, blotches and ulcerations of a suspicious character, at that time known under the strange term Pseudo-Syphilis. The amendment in such cases soon fixed my attention, and also the attention of numerous medical practitioners at the west end of London. In order to further test the value of fumigatory treatment, I threw open the establishment to the medical gentlemen of St. George’s Hospital, to send any patients whose cases were judged suitable for the trial. This led to my being requested to superintend the erection of a similar fumigatory arrangement to my own at that hospital ; since then at the Middlesex and at some other hospitals and infirmaries; and afterwards I had to put up a double series of fumigating baths at St. George’s Hospital. After the lapse of more than ten years’ experience, needful to warrant publishing, l published my Practical Compen- dium of the Diseases of tiie Skin, in which I was induced to insert two cases of severe syphilitic disease, exemplifying * Refer to the works of Lalonette, Paris, 1776, of Abernethy, Pearson, Wallace, Bacot, Cazenove, Schcdel, Parker, &c.