An improved mode of employing mercury by fumigation to the whole body, exemplified by cases of its success. ... in various obstinate diseases of the skin, and especially in syphilitic affections / by Jonathan Green.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An improved mode of employing mercury by fumigation to the whole body, exemplified by cases of its success. ... in various obstinate diseases of the skin, and especially in syphilitic affections / by Jonathan Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    seems probable that the. poison was completely eradicated from the system.* From the time of publishing the second edition of mv Practical Compendium of the Diseases of the Skin in 1837 my attention became more particularly directed to the cura- tive effects of the Mercurial Fumigations in syphilitic cases until their utility remained no longer a doubt, but a certainty. I feel it a duty alike to the Profession and to sufferers afflicted with the disease, to promulgate and make known, that I am most usefully employed in the treatment of sy- philitic diseases, and mainly by the curative results produced by the mercurial fumigations. In many instances, the conjoint use of the usual medicines and applications is desirable, and there can be no reason why they should not be conjoined ; but in such cases the mildest forms of mercurial medicines and in small doses are sufficient for the object in view, viz. the cure of the disease, which might otherwise be months, nay years, under treatment after the ordinary mode of treating Syphilis; and in the end the patient may only live on with little or no enjoyment of life, and with a shattered constitution to the end of the chapter. If the reader has proceeded with me thus far, he will be ready to infer the pretensions l have still to bring before him relative to mercurial fumigations for syphilitic diseases. I will not detain him nor occupy his time in reading numerous cases; that would involve great repetition, and occupy his time worthlessly and my space also. Suffice it to say, that syphilitic symptoms and appearances are ever on the change; with that we have little to do—they are all produced by the same cause, Syphilis; and it is with the latter we have to contend. Ever since 1837, as said be- fore, I have been in the custom of treating every variety of Syphilis and its complications by means for the most part of mercurial fumigations, and with that success which 1 believe is not attainable by any of the ordinary means of treatment. The cases of Syphilis and its complications need only to be named ; the medical practitioner will at once con- ceive the nature of the complications and their attendant miseries, and the sufferers themselves will have no difficulty in comparing how far such symptoms involve sequences and bear comparison with their own cases. 1 am thus saved much It is now more than twenty years since these two cases were under treatment, and there has been no relapse in either case. The subject of the former, Captain T., is now serving in India, and I suppose is well, the subject of the latter. Captain A. B., I lately met in the street, and a more athletic or finer looking man is seldom seen in London. He is married, and the father of four healthy children.