Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm, as a remedy in fever and other diseases : whether applied to the surface of the body, or used internally / by James Currie, M.D.

  • Currie, James, 1756-1805.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical reports, on the effects of water, cold and warm, as a remedy in fever and other diseases : whether applied to the surface of the body, or used internally / by James Currie, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Ind disease ;—a range of inquiry which experience has convinced fne it would be temerity and folly to hope to go through. In this general view of the subject, some valuable communications have however been made to me by my much respected friend Dr. Per- cival ; which do not apply to the particulars treated of in the fol- lowing volumes, but which I am not without the hopes of specify- ing at some future period, when I may have occasion to employ them. Though I have some time seen, that the delay of publishing till my original plan was executed, was likely to render my la- bours wholly abortive, or to convert the imperfect product from a gift into a legacy ; yet I should not have given to the world so detached and unfinished a work as the present, according to the views I had originally entertained, but for the circumstances I arcv about to relate. By the accounts received at the beginning of the present year, the fever of the West Indies appeared to continue its desolating progress with little abatement, and in America to be beginning its ravages anew.—With this pestilence, science seemed hitherto to have contended; in a great measure, in Vain, and new methods of opposing it, were not merely justifiable, but requisite. At this time an account of the success of the nitric acid in Lues Venerea and Hepatitis, as employed by your correspondent Mr. Scott, of Bengal, Was, through your means, given to the public. His the- ory, suggested by the new chymistry, did not appear promising 5 but it was neither wise nor candid to reject his experience on that account. The first trials which I made of his practice persuaded me, that, though the success of the nitric acid might have been exaggerated by a warm imagination and a benevolent heart, it as* suredly did succeed in certain cases of the diseases in question, and that a remedy of considerable poiuer and of perfecl safety^ was intro- duced into medicine. These opinions subsequent experience has served to confirm. In the fever of the West Indies mercury had been much employed, and though different notions were enter- tained of its mode of operation, it seemed on the whole the most approved remedy. Since the nitric acid appeared to be a substi- tute for mercury in other cases, it seemed reasonable to tfy its ef- fects in this fatal fever.. I suggested this practice by letter to some practirioners in the West Indies, and I submitted my notions on the subject to you •, sensible that your character and station might bring that into immediate notice, which the influence of a private individual could but slowly effect.—Whatever difference there toight be in some of our opinions, I was confident there was non«?