Seven years' experience of diphtheria / by W. Lindesay Richardson, M.D.

  • Richardson, Walter Lindesay.
Date:
[©1864?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seven years' experience of diphtheria / by W. Lindesay Richardson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Seven Years' Experience of Diphtheria. By W. LiNDESAY Richardson, M.D., one of the Phy- sicians to the Ballarat District Hospital. There are certain diseases whose names are, from associated ideas, more dreadful to the public mind than the reality, more fatal in imagination than in truth. Internal inflammations were formerly more dreaded, when their consequences were more serious, their pathology being less understood than it is now, and when a mode of treatment then sanctioned by the highest authorities was adopted, but which is now ignored by every educated medical man. It has been stated by ignorant persons, that the practice of medicine has not kept pace with the diagnosis of disease; this is so far false, that the sick who live in our time, have the benefit of a treatment more rational, and more successful, than was understood by the greatest specialists that ever lived twenty years ago. The incubus of author- ity has been, and indeed is now with many minds, tfll di'ag on medicine. It has been aptly observed that there are no authorities in science, facts are the only authorities. But if facts are in truth our sole authorities, we must be careful that our data are facts, and no desire of applause, or of reputation, must be allowed to obscure results, even if these results be unfavour- able. I have ventured to lay before the profession, the details of 220 cases of Diphtheria, treated by me during a period of seven years. I lay claim to no brilliant discovery, no wonderful originality, but I do claim attention to carefully recorded results, which show that the popular fear of this disease is as little founded on tnith, as is the idea that the profession possess no remedies that exert any control over it, and that, therefore, it may be treated by heads of families, on the botanic, or any other system. It may be with reason stated, that with our present knowledge of the disease, death ought not to occur from this cause in adults, and that unless in rare and complicated cases, children are not, or at least ought not to be, the victims commronly supposed. The fatal cases are advertised by the