On the use of ether and etherised cod-liver oil in the treatment of phthisis / by Balthazar W. Foster, M.D.

  • Foster, Balthazar Walter, 1840-1913.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of ether and etherised cod-liver oil in the treatment of phthisis / by Balthazar W. Foster, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    8/12 (page 6)
    I may here also add that, in all the fifty cases there had been marked wasting before my treatment was adopted, in at least half the cases, cod-liver oil notwithstanding. Many of my patients have over and over again expressed their preference for the Etherised oil; and many who have been unable to retain ordinary oil when taken, have been able to use Etherised oil, not only without disagreeable symptoms, but almost with pleasure: to drink it from the bottle, as some have expressed it. In advocating a new method of treatment, it is most satisfactory to be able to appeal to confirmatory evidence. It gives me great pleasure, in the present instance, to be able to call as a witness, in behalf of my views, the Secretary of this Section, Dr. E. L. Fox, to whom I mentioned the advantage of prescribing Ether in Phthisis in April 1867. I had the benefit of discussing the subject with Dr. Fox at that time; and he has since been so good as to send me the results which he obtained. In the early part of this year, he wrote to me as follows : I fear I have kept no precise records of the oil and ether question; but since you mentioned it to me, I have used it very fairly. I give it in two sets of cases : i, those who are tired of taking cod-liver oil; and, 2, those who have been taking it without gaining weight. In the first cases, I find it useful, as the ether, half an hour after the oil, seems to settle the stomach; and, I believe, induces the digestion of the oil. The nausea felt by so many patients is, I think, merely evidence of the oil not being digested. In one hospital case, the man took oil for fourteen days without any benefit; indeed, lost flesh. I continued the same dose of oil, and added the ether, and he began to gain three pounds a-week, and went on at the same ratio as long as he was in the wards. I think I have given it to about thirty patients since our talk in April, mostly in private patients of chronic phthisis, and in one case of great debility, in which I believed the pan- creatic secretion was too little. In this case, the young lady had a great horror of all fat things, but took the oil with ether after it fairly well, and gained on it. It seems a plan generally liked by patients, and I am convinced of its utility. Such is the testimony of Dr. Fox, and I need hardly say how gi-atified I am to have the support of so able an ob- server. I might quote the testimony of others who have used the ether at my suggestion, were it necessary. I may here remark, that I have used Ether in the treatment of Phthisis, not hoping to find a specific, for we have in these days ceased to search after specifics, but simply expecting to discover a rational means of combating one of the most serious symptoms of the malady, and restor- ing to its healthy state that perverted nutrition which forms so charac- teristic a feature in the great majority of consumptive cases. The peculiar character of this disorder of the digestive organs has been dwelt on, and the facts are, I think, sufficiently strong to show that in ether we have the best remedy for renewing the power of assimilating fat, whenever that power is diminished or lost. Such, briefly told, are the results of my inquiry. I submit them to this meeting, in the hope that others may assist me in testing the truth of the facts advanced. Throughout, I have endeavoured to investigate the question with scrupulous care; the drag was selected only after a laborious search, and when the evidence of its physiological action ap- peared to me conclusive. Starting from physiological facts, I have used the more simple science, physiology, to assist me in adding a new fact to the more complex subject—therapeutics; for it is in this way only that I believe medicine, a compound of sciences, can be advanced. First, must we learn the laws which regulate the normal before we can suc- cessfully analyse the laws which regulate the abnormal. In the selection pf cases for experiment, I have also endeavoured to eliminate, as far as