On the antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera, with a sketch of the physiology of this disease, as deduced from that of intermittent fever / by John Parkin.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the antidotal treatment of the epidemic cholera, with a sketch of the physiology of this disease, as deduced from that of intermittent fever / by John Parkin. 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.

    47/140 (page 21)
    t^iin from the partial success which has attended the inhalation of the carbonic acid when employed during the intervals of the accessions. Had the remedy pursued the same course which it has been ar^rued the jwison takes in the circulating system, some result ought to have been witnessed when the antidote was intnaluced soon after the cessation of fever; unless we consider that the sj)ecitic granty of carl)onic acid is greater than that of malaria, and that the remedy is longer |)orfomnng the same circle in the system than the poison. As, in admi- nistering the gjis by the stomacth it is only neces- sary for the patient to take it about half an hour U'fore the coimnenceinent of the accession, in onler to bring the juitidote in contact with the morbitic matter; and as, therefore, during this |K'rio<!, it must have travelled from the extremities of the ab- dominal veins to the capillaries of the lungs, it shows that the passage of this gaseous sul>stance in the venous system is very rapid. In fact, in some slight cases, in which it has been administered at the moment of the accession, I have seen beneficial effects prinluced in the short space of ten or twelve minutes; at a time, lx* it ol)served, when, from the shivering and other symptoms present, the poison had arrived, as we have reason to Ixdieve, in the pulmonary organs. These results prove more forcibly than argu- ments, or logical reasoning, that the physiological deductions l)cfore drawn have some foundation for their support. Thus, when the remedy was ad-