President's address before South Carolina Medical Association, meeting held in Columbia, April, 1872 : Yellow Fever in Charleston, 1871, with remarks upon its treatment / by Francis Peyre Porcher.

  • Porcher, Francis Peyre, 1824-1895.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: President's address before South Carolina Medical Association, meeting held in Columbia, April, 1872 : Yellow Fever in Charleston, 1871, with remarks upon its treatment / by Francis Peyre Porcher. 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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    In my humble judgment, if not the height of folly, it is at least extremely unfair to decry—or what is worse : to aban- don a course of management, which is eminently and strikingly successful in nearly or quite all the cases of the class pre- viously described, because it fails to cure those who have no right to expect a miracle to be worked in their behalf. Any treatment, which is successful, is not so by accident; but because it is based upon the requirements and real nature of the disease—and throughout does the patient no harm. It is high time for the intelligent members of our profession, particularly if they be at all apathetic, to give up the pleasing idea that the practice of physic is all guess-work—in which one artist does full as well as another; that fate and disease have the control: and that always when a child or a man dies, the “physician who slays \s Death! After a careful study of the disease during many years,— using the microscope largely in its investigation, and exam- ining the writings and practice of others,—I modified what I thought was advisable in the suggestions of Blair and others. The treatment appropriate to the several stages, founded upon a careful consideration of the pathology of the disease, was thus elaborated.* This, with some misgivings—even after testing it during several epidemics, was briefly epitomized and re-asserted in a paper in the last volume of your Tran- sactions;—which you will observe was issued before the breaking out of the epidemic of the past summer. There is reason to hope that the general plan therein dis- closed, has not been entirely disregarded in their most im- portant features, by others during the past epidemic—though it was called Blair’s. I will not say that this, or an analogous method used by others, can never be improved ; but (simple as it may now appear) I unhesitatingly express my belief that the principles upon which it is based are well founded, and that its general details will never be materially deviated from without detriment to the patient. Some arterial sedatives may be discovered which shall be specially applicable in the treatment of this disease—or some catalytic agents, like the hyposulphites, used internally or hypodermically, may hasten the cure by neutralizing the poison in the blood and eliminat- ing it. It has been my business again to test it fully, with results, *See my Prize Essay befori this Association, “ Illustrations of Disease with the Microscope,” i86i ; and papers in Charleston Medical Journal—numbers for Jan- uary, 1858, and March, 1859.