A view of the mercurial practice in febrile diseases / by John Warren, M.D.

  • Warren, John, 1753-1815.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A view of the mercurial practice in febrile diseases / by John Warren, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    sumed that character, and a great variety of other means had been used without success, it was natural to resort to it; and that Herculean disease was attack- ed with a medicine, whose powers were supposed alone equal to its expulsion. Whether the yellow fever was first introduced into the West Indies in the year 1793, as Dr. Chis- holm intimates ; or whether it had been known there as early as the seventeenth century, and from that period had frequently visited, or originated in these islands, it is probable he was, if not the first, one of the earliest practitioners, who considered mercury as the only medicine to be relied on for its cure. The dissections, which had been made for the purpose of ascertaining the proximate cause of this disease, had, in some measure, demonstrated the na- ture of it; and had proved, that the liver was one of the organs most immediately affected, or in which the marks of derangement were most conspicuous. The known efficacy of mercury in glandular dis- orders, with its supposed appropriate determination to the liver, was the circumstance which led to the experiment; and to this may be added an opinion not even at this day entirely exploded, that by some specific action of this remedy on the contagious matter, as in lues venerea, the poison was subdued and expelled from the habit. It was soon after adopted as the most certain method of controling the ravages of the yellow fever ; and has gradually, from this period, insinuated itself into the method of treat-