The history and therapeutical value of arsenic in skin diseases / by Malcolm Morris.

  • Morris, Malcolm Alexander, 1849-1924.
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history and therapeutical value of arsenic in skin diseases / by Malcolm Morris. 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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    About the same time as the value, of arsenic was universally recognised owing to the labours of Fowler in England and Harles in Germany, Brera1 adopted it at his clinique at Pavia. He prescribed it chiefly for the fevers of North Italy, and in the year 1806 published in his Clinical Observations a sound estimate of its use and a complete refutation of its opponents. His pupils, however, in consequence of his recommendations and success, fancied it a specific not only in fever, but in nearly all otlierdiseases. It is in France that the history of arsenic is most instructive. After its general use in the tenth century it fell into discredit among jAysicians, though much used by the people themselves aud by quacks. The successful revival of its use by the English and Americans, the Germans and Italians, could not long be neglected in France, and it was an army doctor who had practised in America and travelled in England, Louis Valentin, that first made it known in France by articles in the Journal' de Medecine. The first book that appeared on the subject was by Dr. Fauves, published at Paris, 1804, under the name of Clinical Researches on the Effects of Arsenic in Intermittent Fever, but Dr. Fodere, physician to the military and civil hospital at Martigues, was the first to use it in large quantities. In 1809 he described the success he had had in more than 300 cases of intermittent fever by means of arsenious acid, which he had first used in spite of himself, owing to the lack of quinine. Dr. Niel, first physician to the hospital of Marseilles, declared ho knew no febrifuge equal to arseniate of soda, and Desgranges, in a remarkable article in the Journal Generale de Medecine in 1807, describes the practice with this drug in England and America, and confirmed the results from his own experiences. In spite of the testimony of so many eminent physicians, and the miiversal success they had reported, Deidier, Peyrilhe, and Thibaut violently opposed its introduction, and were enabled once more to procure its disuse. Yet all did not acquiesce in its rejection, and both Cazenave in 1833 and Trousseau in 1837, in articles in diction- aries, assert its therapeutic value, but without any appreciable result. It was reserved for Boudin,2 physician general to the i Harles, p. 99. 2 Boudin, Traiti <ks Fievres Intermittent^, 1842, p. 260.