Notes and suggestions on cod-liver oil and its uses : with some practical remarks addressed to those who cannot take it / by Benjamin Clarke.

  • Clarke, Benjamin, 1821-1906.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes and suggestions on cod-liver oil and its uses : with some practical remarks addressed to those who cannot take it / by Benjamin Clarke. 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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    nervous and arterial systems, allaying more especially the irritabi- lity existing in chronic inflammation, and also that depending on anemia; and it appears difficult in any other way to account for its having become regarded by some continental physicians as an almost universal remedy (either singly, or as an adjunct to others) • for chronic diseases. And apart from this conviction, deduced from its internal use, I feel confident that, topically applied, it is (although not the most powerful) the most permanent in its effects of any of the antispasmodics*, which may lend some support to the opinion that its action, when taken internally, is to be explained by regarding it as a sedative and antispasmodic. The difference between the action of the Loffoden and the pale English oil, as far as my own observations have extended, I believe to be as follows :—The Loffoden oil stops the apparently sthenic pulse (that is to say, that excitement of the pulse which depends more on irritability than on any chronic inflammation which may accompany it), which is so liable to be mistaken for an inflammatory pulse by the practitioner who does not carefully examine all the symptoms ; thus it removes the hardness of the pulse in hectic fever, and other febrile conditions depending on irritability and debility; and I believe it may be said to have a mi generis mode of action, i. e. to allay irritability in a peculiar way, which no medicine of either the vegetable, saline, or mineral departments will accomplish, although it does not supersede the use of any of them, as they may be advantageously prescribed in conjunction with it, as Dr. De Jongh has particularly noticedf. This effect on the circulation the pale English oil has, at all events, in a much less degree, it being perhaps so feebly marked as not to be perceptible, so that in the meantime the patient (from the slowness of its action in some cases of extreme debihty) must be in danger of sinking from exhaustion, or the case (e. g. in phthisis) may become incurable from protraction. But as far as the pale oil has medicinal qualities, I feel satisfied that its mode of action is the same as that of the Loffoden, producing the same effects, only in a minor degree; so that my inference agrees with the observations of those who have asserted the superiority of the light brown oil as a medicine, as for instance • This observation applies more especially to the boiled oil afterwards noticed, which as a topical antispasmodic and sedative, has, 1 doubt no',, much more,—perhaps more than double the power oi the oil before it has been boiled. t 1 believe, however, the strictly curative powers of the oil to be weak, which is shown by its c.xtreme slowness in effecting a cure in some cases where, nevertheless, no other medicine succeeds. Its most beneficial effects, therefore, arc to be expected only when that kind which has the medicinal property in the highest degree is employed.