On the cure of epilepsy by the Cotyledon umbilicus / [Thomas Salter].

  • Salter, Thomas
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the cure of epilepsy by the Cotyledon umbilicus / [Thomas Salter]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON THE CURE OF EPILEPSY BY THE COTYLEDON UMBILICUS, By THOMAS SALTER, Esq., F.L.S., F.R.C.S. Fellow of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. [From the “London Medical Gazette,” March 2nd, 1849.] For a disease so obscure and intractable, and hitherto so little amenable to treatment, as epilepsy, no apology is required for suggesting a new remedy, even though that remedy may not be sustained by any great weight of testimony to recommend its em¬ ployment. I never thought it an illusion to suppose that an agent might some day be discovered, to whose influence this distressing malady might yield. The pathology of the disease, so far as it is understood, may be said to encourage the hope that this will be the case. Indepen¬ dently of those occasional attacks of sympathetic epilepsy, univer¬ sally allowed to be functional, there are reasons for believing that many of the more serious cases, which end in incurable disease, are in their commencement functional also, but arising from some peculiar temporary condition of the nervous centres, and belong to that division of the nervous disorder which has aptly been called centric. If epilepsy is ever to be successfully combated it is reasonable to suppose that the greatest chance of success will be afforded, ere repeated attacks, arising from the peculiar state of the nervous centres alluded to, have produced those organic changes so com¬ monly the result of a long continuance of the malady. For epi¬ lepsy, associated with some of these organic lesions, it would be chimerical to imagine that a remedy will ever be found; and it is with no overweening confidence that I venture to direct the attention of the profession to the one employed in the case I am now about to relate, but which is confidently believed by a patient and relative of my own, to have been the means of her restoration to health. This remedy is the expressed juice of the Cotyledon umbilicus. Should your numerous readers think it worth while to make a trial of it, they may be assured that it will do their patients no harm, and the mere possibility of good accruing from its employ¬ ment in a malady for the most part hitherto so hopeless, will, I have no doubt, with many, be a sufficient incentive to induce them to put it to the test of experiment. Miss G-, the lady whose case is here referred to, is now 28 years of age. She was attacked with epilepsy, when on a visit to a relative in town, about fourteen years since. Her parents were both healthy persons, and it is not known that any member of either family suffered from the disease. She is of middle stature, fair complexion, somewhat stoutly made, and previous to her illness was of a lively and cheerful disposition, and in the uniform enjoyment of good health. .. . *'■***