An essay on the pathology and therapeutics of scarlet fever / by Caspar Morris.

  • Morris, Caspar, 1805-1884.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the pathology and therapeutics of scarlet fever / by Caspar Morris. 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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    and quick, yet attended with some remissions and even sink- ings, but it most commonly kept up those deceiving strokes which sometimes but very improperly indicate the use of the lancet. .... Although most of the symptoms in the beginning of this disease, as well as the fulness of the pulse, appeared to point out to us the necessity of bleeding, yet, should we have complied with the indication, it would have proved a fatal error. That this opinion was the result of observation is proved by the remark, that the blood which has been drawn away in these cases has been often observed to have a tenacious glue upon the surface, and yet, neverthe- less, it has been found underneath to be broken, loose and divided in its texture, and has also thereon very evident marks of a putrid gore which must and does increase by bleeding. One blood-letting may make a difference of a change from a texture that, with proper management, would have carried a patient through the sickness with safety, to no texture at all, but a total dissolution of all animal fluids, which must in course terminate in death. Of such vast consequence is this one article of bleeding, that it has been my choice to give this caution against it in the strongest terms. Dr. Burrows in an interesting article on this disease, in the Library of Practical Medicine, remarks of the malignant form, that, it quickly indicates its formidable nature by the sudden de- pression of the vital powers. If blood-letting from the arm be a remedy of doubtful propriety in the two former varieties, it is here hazardous in the extreme. Dr. Chapman says:— The abstraction of blood appears to be required by the loaded state of the organs, and contra-indicated by the de- pression of the vital energies. My own conviction is, that it should not be hazarded, unless reaction is pretty firmly es- tablished, the circulation in some force, and the skin warm, and even then is to be resorted to with extreme circumspection. And with regard to the general applicability of blood-letting