Case of hemorrhage following the extraction of a tooth, and terminating fatally / by David Hay.

  • Hay David.
Date:
[1842?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of hemorrhage following the extraction of a tooth, and terminating fatally / by David Hay. 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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    extraction of a tooth had required for its arrest continued com- pression for several days. At another time it was necessary to use the actual cautery to stop the bleeding from leech-bites; and the same means were on one occasion requisite to stop the bleed- ing from a simple wound of a finger. Several times, large ec- chymoses had formed after very slight bruises. In this paper, the sulphate of soda is mentioned as having extraoi'dinary power in arresting hemorrhage in some of these cases. It was found, that if this salt were taken for several days successively, in doses large enough to purge the bowels, the bleeding ceased, and the wound began to cicatrise. Krimer also alludes to the efficacy of this remedy in such cases, particularly to the history of one family, of which all the male descendants for four generations had been most strikingly subject to hemorrhagic accidents. M. Sanson, in his Goncours Thesis for 1836, mentions the case of a man who died from a urethral he- morrhage. Six of his children had perished from the bleeding from casual wounds. In the cases 2d and 3d, the hemorrhagic constitution was ac- companied by rheumatism ; in No. S, from the Archives Generales for October 1833, all the males of the family were subject to oc- casional spitting and vomiting of blood; also to hsematuria, epis- taxis, and to troublesome hemorrhage from any part which might chance to be wounded. All of them sulfered from troublesome rheumatic pains whenever they were affected with any form of hemorrhage. In the 20th volume of the London Med. and Physic. Journal., 1808, there is an account of a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families, by John C. Otto, M.D., of Philadelphia; this disposition being transmitted almost entirely to the males, and shown upon the slightest scratch or most trifling cut. In one of the instances, Dr Otto says, so assured are the members of this family of the terrible consequences of the least wound, that they will not suffer themselves to be bled on any consideration, having lost a relation by not being able to stop the discharge occasioned by this operation. In this paper, the sulphate of soda is mentioned as a remedy. A few years since the sulphate of soda was accidentally found to be completely curative of the hemorrhages I have described: an ordinary purging dose, administered two or three days in suc- cession, generally stops them, and by a more frequent repetition, is certain of producing this effect. Dr Rush, continues Dr Otto, has informed me that he has twice been consulted, in the course of his practice, upon this dis- ease ; the first time by a family in York, and the second by one in Northampton County, in this state. He likewise favoured me with the following account, which he received some years since