Hysteria : remote causes of disease in general treatment of disease by tonic agency local or surgical forms of hysteria, etc. six lectures delivered to the students of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1866 / by F.C. Skey.

  • Skey, Frederic C. (Frederic Carpenter), 1798-1872.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : remote causes of disease in general treatment of disease by tonic agency local or surgical forms of hysteria, etc. six lectures delivered to the students of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1866 / by F.C. Skey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with some confidence, for I have tried both. In the history of the human mind there is no operation more difficult than that of divesting it of early impressions inculcated by authority and confirmed and estabhshed by time. Convictions increase in strength as we get older, for the habit of examining the one side of a question only, and of conforming to all its requirements, has assumed a settled, permanent form, and with the multi- tude engaged in the practice of our profession there is no adequate motive to enter on a path of inquiry which may tend to unsettle the convictions of their past lives. Some fifteen years since I had a succession of cases of severe congestion—that is, redness, not inflammation—accom- panying wounds caused by operations, cases of mammary cancer or other tumours removed by the knife, amputa- tions, hernia, &c. These cases exhibited on the third or fourth day congestion of the vessels around the wound, which often extended and led to abscesses, and occasion- ally to death. It was called in common hospital parlance erysipelas, having the feature of redness only in common with that disease ; but it was not erysipelas: in truth, it was a far more formidable condition. I ordered everv %> patient, after undergoing any serious operation, treatment by stimulants. I gave two tablespoonfuls of brandy and two of water every four hours, to be continued for one, two, or more days. From that date I never lost a patient from this cause, and rarely did any unhealthy condition of the affected region present itself. Now observe this feature in the treatment by stimu- lants. If these examples of local congestion of the blood-