The great sulphur cure brought to the test : and workings of the new curative machine proposed for human lungs and windpipes / by Robert Pairman ; preface by J. Christison.

Date:
1867
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great sulphur cure brought to the test : and workings of the new curative machine proposed for human lungs and windpipes / by Robert Pairman ; preface by J. Christison. 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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    them in temporary sojourners, or is asthma known by the usual resi- dents in these districts at all ? Second Illustration.—I have repeatedly had asthmatic patients who could uot stand the pure and salubrious air of the country, but could always breathe with freedom in the very heart of smoky London. This used to astonish me. But may not the sulphur in the coals ex- plain it all ? The smoke of a large city is not so bad a thing as we have hitherto supposed. What with one disinfectant in the shape of carbon, and another in the shape of sulphur fumes, it is nothing but a great vapoury sheet spread by a kind Providence as a protecting mantle over the inhabitants, but for whose benignant influence, fever, plagues, throat and lung afi'ections, might riot more abundantly than they do in such congregated masses of human beings. Third Illustration.—Dr. Halliday Douglas mentions a case of a con- sumptive gentleman ordered by his London physician to Wales for change of scene. He could breathe freely only when the wind hap- pened to be in a certain direction. This was at first a mystery, until it was discovered that the health-bringing wind from that direction had to blow over some large ‘ smelting frumaces ’ before it reached his dwelling. Reflection Y.—It is perfectly certain that many diseases—fevers, for example—originate in an impure state of blood. The blood has received a dose of poison, which is supposed to multiply itself and work in that fluid after the manner of a ferment. More than twenty years ago I used to sigh for some medicine which, by entering the blood, would destroy that ferment, and frequently mentioned the thing to my friend Dr. Smith, as the one great desideratum of our age. Even consumption itself is a blood disease of this nature, originating in that vital fluid, existing there, perhaps, for years, till, by some causes being fomented into power, it finally localizes itself in the lungs and bowels. Well, why (without experiment) should it be considered nonsense that sulphur fumes should have some virtue in consumption, if there be any truth in the constant averments of great medical authorities (Dr. Churchill for example), who for some years have represented the various sulphites and hypo-sulphites of soda, lime, etc., as the best re- medies yet discovered both for the prevention and cure of that disease ? For what is a sulphite of soda or lime ? Nothing but common sulphur fumes (or sulphurous acid, as its chemical name is) united with a base. Medical men have so frequently been hoaxed by ‘ certain cures ’ for consumption, that, for my part, having long given up the search as hopeless, I never thought it worth my while to give the slightest heed to any such advertisements constantly appearing in our medical journals.^ Though following, in this respect, the example of greater men, I doubt if we have been acting altogether wisely, and mean hereafter to give any poor patient the benefit of the doubt, when threatened or attacked by that intractable disease. What confirms me in the propriety of this resolution, is an announce- ment in this present month’s number (October 1867) of the Edinburgh Medical Journal. In an article extracted from a Jamaica newspaper