The treatment of acute failure of the heart / [J.D. Rolleston].

  • Rolleston, John Davy, 1873-1946.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The treatment of acute failure of the heart / [J.D. Rolleston]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    To the Editors »/The Lancet. Sirs,—I read with much interest and pleasure Dr. C. Bolton’s paper on this subject in The Lancet of March 30th, p. 870, particularly that part of it concerning diphtheria. His attitude towards alcohol and strychnine and his insist- ence upon the importance of rest meet with my most cordial support, his views being substantially the same as those I have expressed elsewhere.1 The paper, however, contains certain statements which should not, I think, be allowed to pass unchallenged. After rightly emphasising the importance of the early administration of antitoxin he says: “If antitoxin is administered on the first day of the disease, a circumstance only possible when the patient contracts the disease in a hospital, the mortality is only £ per cent After the fifth day antitoxin is unable to produce any reduction of the mortality.” Granted that diphtheria is often insidious in its onset, especially in children, in whom it may be mistaken for a cold or some other trifling affection, the prodromal symptoms are often sufficiently obtrusive to make the parents seek medical advice, especially if a recent case in the family or imme- diate neighbourhood has caused them to be on the alert.