A Practical Treatise on the Efficacy of Bloodletting, in the Epidemic Fever of Edinburgh: Illustrated by Numerous Cases and Tables Extracted from the Journals of the Queensberry-House Fever Hospital

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Bell & Bradfute, 1819 - Epidemics - 358 pages

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Page 108 - Such, however, is, at the same time, the nature of the animal economy, that this debility proves an indirect stimulus to the sanguiferous system ; whence, by the intervention of the cold stage and spasm connected with it, the action of the heart and larger arteries is increased, and continues so till it has had the effect of restoring the energy of the brain, of extending this energy to the extreme vessels, of restoring, therefore, their action, and thereby especially overcoming the spasm affecting...
Page 93 - I ordered the Surgeons to bleed them in both Arms, and to go round to them all, with Command to leave them bleeding till all were blooded, and then come and tie them up in their Turns. Thus they lay bleeding and fainting, so long, that I could not conceive they could lose less than an hundred Ounces each man.
Page 93 - We had on board Oil and Spirit of Vitriol sufficient, which I caused to be mixed with Water to the Acidity of a Lemon, and made them drink very freely of it; so that notwithstanding we had one hundred and eighty odd down in this most fatal Distemper, yet we lost no more than seven or eight; and even these owed their Deaths to the strong Liquors which their MessMates procured for them.
Page 80 - ... to measure the blood, which falling on the ground, the quantity each person lost could not, of course, be known. The operation being over, he ordered them to lie in their tents ; and though he gave no kind of remedy after bleeding, yet of the numbers that were thus treated, not a single person...
Page 168 - ... but because they desire to give every body an ill opinion of it. Or, suppose they do not do it from wickedness, they cannot be excused from ignorance and perverseness, — both which are, doubtless, pernicious, but the former much more so." And again, "one hundred thousand men perish from the want of bloodletting, or from its not being timely employed, where one perishes from excessive bleeding, when prescribed by a physician.
Page 35 - February 23, 1818, my friends, Messrs. Stephenson and Christison, the matron, two apothecaries in succession, the shop-boy, washer-woman and thirty-eight nurses, have been infected; four of the nurses have died. With the exception of two or three nurses, who have been but a short time in the hospital, I am now the only person in this house who has not caught the disease within the last eight or ten months.
Page 111 - blood-letting one of the most powerful means of diminishing the activity of the whole body, especially of the sanguiniferous system, and the most effectual means of moderating the violence of reaction in fevers.
Page 108 - Dr. Mason Good is of the same opinion, and speaks of fever as " characterized by debility of the living fibre." These views have been extensively assailed, both by the pen and by the lancet, by those from whose special experience we naturally should have expected the soundest views and the...
Page 35 - Infirmary, in the course of four months, my three colleagues, two of the young men in the apothecary shop, two housemaids, and thirteen or fourteen nurses, caught the disease, and the matron and one of the dressers died of it. Since I left the infirmary, three more of the gentlemen acting as clerks, one of the young men in the shop, and many more of the nurses, have caught the infection, but the number I do not know. In this hospital (Queensberry House), since it was opened on the 23d February, 1818,...
Page 92 - Drawboard over them; so that it is no wonder we receiv'd the infection. In a very few Days after we got on board one of the Surgeons came to me to acquaint me that several of my Men were taken after a violent Manner, with that Languor of Spirits that they were not able to move. I immediately went among them, and, to my great Surprise, soon discerned what was the Matter. In less than Forty-eight Hours we had in our several Ships one hundred and eighty Men in this miserable Condition. I ORDER'D the...

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