Observations on the peripneumonia typhodes : now prevailing in several districts of the United States. Communicated in a letter to T. Romeyn Beck.

  • Hosack, David, 1769-1835.
Date:
1813
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the peripneumonia typhodes : now prevailing in several districts of the United States. Communicated in a letter to T. Romeyn Beck. 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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    the mortality of the disease. On the other hand, the prac- tice of administering brandy and other ardent spirits in the quantity they have been lately prescribed, is truly adding fire to the flame that is already consuming the patient, and cannot be justified either by principle or practice. But the prudent physician will avoid both Scylla and Charybdis: In the young and athletic, he will prevent the brain from being inundated with blood, by the early and judicious use of the lancet, blisters, and other means usually prescribed for dimi- nishing inflammation ; keeping in view the age, strength, con- stitution of his patient, and the general symptoms indicating a putrescent state of the system. On the contrary, in fee- ble old age, in the habit debilitated by disease, or intemper- ance, in which those inflammatory symptoms are less vio- lent, and the tendency to putrefaction is most predominant, he will depend chiefly on those means usually resorted to for the purpose of promoting the perspiration and other ex- cretions, at the same time, that by suitable antiseptic drinks and nourishment he will guard against that debility which so rapidly ensues in this condition of the system. He will in such cases, of course, carefully abstain from the use of blood- letting and other depleting remedies. But he will certainly not effect the first purpose by the excessive use of brandy and ardent spirits. So far from promoting the excretions of the system, they actually restrain those very evaculions which it should be our object to promote, and by which alone we are enabled to counteract the typhoid state of body in this or any other febrile disease. As a substitute, therefore, for this brandy system in those cases where this typhoid tendency prevails, and you are for- bidden the use of the lancet and other depleting remedies, or where the symptoms of local inflammation are so mild that they are not indicated, let me recommend to you, after emp- tvi.'iQ. the bowels by an enema, or mild purgative, to make