Observations on the principal medical institutions and practice of France, Italy, and Germany : with notices of the universities, and cases from hospital practice : to which is added an appendix, on animal magnetism and homœopathy / by Edwin Lee.

  • Lee, Edwin, -1870.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the principal medical institutions and practice of France, Italy, and Germany : with notices of the universities, and cases from hospital practice : to which is added an appendix, on animal magnetism and homœopathy / by Edwin Lee. 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.)

    18/102
    however, so different as might he expected from a perusal of their works. A pharmaceutical combination of drugs is not frequently employed, the remedies being mostly of a simple nature, and except the difference in regard to sanguineous depletion; tisanes, decoctions ot simple herbs, mucilaginous and sweetened beverages, joined to tepid baths and enemata, are the medical means mostly used in the great majority of cases. The leading feature of the Broussaian doctrine is, as is pretty generally known, the reference of fever to a local origin. This was considered to be inflammation, in a greater or less degree, of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels, which was supposed to be present in the greater number of acute, and in many chronic diseases: hence the practice mainly consisted in the avoidance of all stimulants, tonics, purgatives, or any medicine likely to irritate this membrane; and in the employment of abstinence or liquid diet, occa- sional blood-letting, the repeated application of leeches to the abdomen, and the administration of acidulated cooling drinks. At present, however, when it is becoming evident to many practitioners that the inflammatory lesions met with in fever are more frequently effects than causes, this treatment is less rigidly adopted : remedies formerly alto- gether proscribed are now more often used, and the results are a dimi- nution of the generally diffused apprehension of gastro-entirite among the profession, as also of the mortality among the patients. The periodicity of diseases was always a stumbling-block in the way of the Broussaian doctrine, and was attempted to be got over by a theory of the intermission of inflammations. Thus intermittent fevers were regarded as periodical inflammations of the alimentary canal, notwithstanding which, bark continued to be resorted to for their cure. This opinion is, I believe, now generally abandoned. An influential author expresses himself on the subject of intermittents in these terms: —And we have until the present time defended this opinion; but it now appears to us that their nature resides in the blood, and that the nervous and inflammatory symptoms by which they show them- selves are but the effects of the contact of the miasm on the nervous centres and principal organs; especially on the digestive passages, parts which we have seen in all cases of poisoning where a history of the case preceded, almost constantly the first to feel the effects of different poisons, in whatever manner introduced into the system.* An apprehension of exciting inflammation in the alimentary canal still, however, acts as a bugbear in preventing the employment of many remedies from which advantage is daily derived in England. The same fear has probably given rise to the plan followed in many cases, of introducing medicines by an abraded or blistered surface on the skin, or what is termed the methode endermique. It is obvious that this method is only applicable when the substances to be introduced are small in quantity, or exist in the concentrated state, as quinine, strychnine, digitalis, the salts of morphia, &c. Medicines so adminis- tered are said to be as efficacious as when taken into the stomach ; and there is no doubt the plan might be advantageously adopted in cases * Elemens de Pathologie. Roche et Sanson.