A demonstration of the curability of pulmonary consumption : in all its stages. Comprising an inquiry into the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment and prevention of tuberculous diseases in general / By Wm. A. M'Dowell, M.D.

  • M'Dowell, William A. (William Adair), 1795-1853.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A demonstration of the curability of pulmonary consumption : in all its stages. Comprising an inquiry into the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment and prevention of tuberculous diseases in general / By Wm. A. M'Dowell, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    usually applied. When in his fields he carried dried beef in his pocket, and chipped it off to chew like tobacco between meals. The habit was reprobated; his friends admonished him, that it would ''dry up his blood;* but he ate on, said he liked it and it agreed with him. This was the only circumstance at all remarkable either in his habits or dieting; and he perfectly recovered. He remained through life remarkably lean, but in the en- joyment of more than ordinarily good health, and without a symptom of phthisis. He died suddenly in 1840, aged 58; the disease unknown. 302. Muriate of soda, as a medicine, is a perfect Proteus. We have seen from analysis, that it consti- tutes about 9 parts per 1000 of the blood, or nearly 5 per cent, of its solids; a proportion exceeding that of all its other mineral constituents, collectively. A due portion of it, therefore, would seem indispensable as an article of diet. When taken as a medicine the variety of its effects is remarkable. In small doses it acts as a stimulant, tonic, anthelmintic, and anti-irri- tant; in large doses, as a purgative and an emetic; it is also an astringent and a styptic; and when exces- sively used it becomes a most powerful sorbefacient. It is, in fact, an astringent in diarrhoea, a purgative in constipation, a tonic, an emetic, a stimulant, an anti- irritant, a styptic in haemoptysis, and the cause of fatal haemorrhage in scurvy. * The popular apprehension of the free use of salt, and the common remark, so truly characteristic of the actual modus operandi, diminishing the relative proportion of serum, are very probably traditionary from our forefathers of the 16th or 17th century; amongst whom the pre- dominant morbid tendency was to the scorbutic diathesis. (323-326.)