The nature and treatment of the epidemic cholera / [Robert Venables].

  • Venables, Robert
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature and treatment of the epidemic cholera / [Robert Venables]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/56 (page 18)
    from being in accordance with my observation. Deli¬ rium, coma, and stertortous breathing, have frequently appeared during the typhoid stage; and whenever this form of fever was well marked, delirium or coma to some extent, greater or less, generally prevailed. In enumerating the symptoms, retention of urine has been noted as a symptom in the latter stages of the fever ; and this no doubt arises from a kind of vesical paralysis from nervous torpor. A man, a fish-curer, named Calder, having been admitted into the Hospital at Wick, died in the typhoid stage. He suffered from coma, slow laborious stertortous breathing. On examination, the bladder was found full of urine, though not remarkably distended. In the coma there are two states of the eye to which 1 am anxious to direct the attention. The eye is dull and suffused in both ; but in one the pupil is contracted ; in the other it is dilated: in both there is a total insensi¬ bility to the stimulus of light. The contracted pupil marks a sub-acute inflammatory action of the capillary arteries ; wliile the dilated infers veno-congestive in¬ flammation. The former is the more fatal, and of course presents the most unfavourable prognosis. Although the same order of consecutive jflienomena present itself in the other organs and tissues, it will not be necessary to consider them in this place ; because, although they may to a certain extent aggravate the symptoms, yet they seldom, if ever, prove the cause of death. At all events, what has been already observed upon the general question, can be easily applied by the competent practitioner to particular cases. With respect to the pathology of the disease, it may be observed, that the cause, whatever it may ].»e, exerts