Asiatic cholera : its cause and cure, discovered and demonstrated / by Thomas Harvey.

  • Harvey, Thomas.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Asiatic cholera : its cause and cure, discovered and demonstrated / by Thomas Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Medical men who were required to combat this new and formidable antagonist, availed themselves of all ordinary means to restore warmth to the body, and employed the usual sedatives to counteract the effects of violent cramps in the bowels and extremities, and in some cases these remedies, although as I con- ceive indirect in their operation, were successful; —but notwithstanding some modes of treatment succeeded in one case, and others highly dis- similar in others ; and although all aimed at one definite object—the restoration of heat and circulation to the surface of the body—I have been unable to discover that this practice was the result of a correct appreciation of the causes which had produced such unprecedented effects ; and in the absence of any rational theory of the cause of Cholera, it must he obvious to the least initiated that the remedies sought out and applied were mere experiments upon a most insidious disease, guided solely by the judgment of different practitioners, according to the varying phases exhibited in its rapid progress. As the disease was new to the medical profession of this country, it was obvious that a new and distinct cause was superadded to the catalogue of active agencies, periodically preva- lent and fatally operative under favorable con- ditions ; and upon the medical world was cast the responsibility ol determining at the earliest