Delirium tremens : its nature and treatment / by Charles S. Tripler.

  • Tripler, Chas. S. (Charles Stuart), 1806-1866.
Date:
[1857?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Delirium tremens : its nature and treatment / by Charles S. Tripler. 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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    two, when not injudiciously interfered with ; but this is only an occasional occurrence and cannot be trusted to. This state of delirium, when directly produced, as it commonly is, by intoxication, is not always accompanied by tremors at its commencement, but when thus accompanied, it is often mista- ken for the true form of delirium tremens, into which it how- ever not unfrequently passes, chiefly owing to the cause in which it originated. It is generally attended by extreme irritability, often by great violence and sometimes by general spasms and constant vomiting. The head is usually hot and the face flushed. Of the second species he says, Whilst the former state of delirium is often directly occasioned by drunkenness, this is as frequently indirectly produced by the same cause; the one being immediately consequent upon or accompanying intoxication, the other commonly resulting from the abstraction of the accustomed stimulus, after an habituated or continued indulgence in it, or after a protracted fit of inebriety. Copland has also identified this form with the Delirium Traumaticum of British writers. Here, then, we have the Sthenic and Asthenic forms of modern writers, mv Antimony and Opium Types, considered as the patholo- gical sequences of the two modes of causation—the former as due to protracted drunkenness, the latter as the effect of the sudden abstraction of accustomed stimulus. Dr. Corrigan has described three varieties of the disease— Asthenic, Sthenic, and a mixed form. The Asthenic, he attributes to a persistent use of stimulants, till the man can neither drink nor eat any more. He cannot sleep ; images of various kinds float before his eyes; his stomach is sick; pulse quick and weak ; skin cold and clammy—a set of symp- toms constituting as I have said, a state of collapse conse- quent upon the cessation of long cDntinued stimulants. Your patient is altogether in a condition in which death may occur at any moment, so that the prognosis is here extremely uncertain. I may remark here, that these attacks frequently repeated induce a state from which there is no hope of recov-