Manual of therapeutics / by L. Martinet ; translated, with alterations and additions, by Robert Norton.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of therapeutics / by L. Martinet ; translated, with alterations and additions, by Robert Norton. 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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    As any delay may lead to fatal haemorrhage, or a tedions if not incurable palsy, nothing shonld deter us from the abstraction of blood as soon as possible after the seizure, unless there should be such excessive collapse, or such prolonged syncope, as to threaten immediate death. In this case, the application of boiling water to the epigastrium, sinapisms to the feet, and dry capping glasses to the nucha or between the shoulders, together with the employment of irritating eneraata, frictions with ammoniacal lineament, or aromatic tinctnres, will be necessary to maintain the spark of life, when so near extinction.* In such cases the hap- piest effects have often resulted from the internal use of musk, camphor, acetate of ammonia, cinchona, ether, and other .diffusible stimulants, but the moment that the pulse regains its strength, and the skin its warmth, bleeding must be practised. [In this as in every other case'of extreme congestion, that is when the surface of the body is universally cold, and the .pulse scarcely susceptible, there is prebably no remedy so powerful as the hot air bath, which at the same time arouses the heart to action, and removes the accumulation of blood by which it and the other internal organs are oppressed. As there may be no better opportunity, I will here ex- • Care roust be Liken to avoid narcotic substances, such for instance as tobacco, which from their direct influence over the brain, would almost necessarily aggravate the coma,