Contributions to practical medicine and surgery / by James Arnott.

  • Arnott, James, 1794-1885.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to practical medicine and surgery / by James Arnott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ON INTENSE COLD AS A REMEDY OF DISEASE. The history of cold as a remedy is very singular. Al- though one of the oldest of medicinal applications, and almost an instinctive one, there has always been a very general prejudice against it. The introduction of a cooling regimen in fevers, etc., in lieu of the hot and sweating one, was a greater triumph achieved by Sydenham than his overcoming the prejudice against Jesuit's bark as a remedy for ague ; and even at the present day, notwithstanding the declaration of a learned German professor of surgery that he would abandon his profession if deprived of the use of cold,* the tendency is not altogether confined to nurses to substitute warm drinks and fomentations for cold ones, in cases where the latter are the appropriate remedy. It is only the craving of the patient for cold drink in cholera that has prevented the administration of hot potations in lieu of iced water, the best, if not the only useful remedy for it hitherto exhibited; and, had warm applications been as accessible to military surgeons as cold ones, the latter might not have attained their present high reputation in the treat- ment of gunshot wounds. This prejudice against cold may be traced to more than one erroneous theory. In Sydenham's day, it was deemed essential for the cure of fevers that the morbid matter in the blood should be expelled through the skin, the emunc- tories of which, it was further supposed, were contracted by cold and by the astringent principle of bark ; and in later * Esuiarch's Essay on Cold ; Sydenham Society's publications for lbOl.