Variola, its nature and treatment : with an addendum : read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, November, 1857 / by Andrew Nebinger.

  • Nebinger, Andrew, 1819-1886.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Variola, its nature and treatment : with an addendum : read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, November, 1857 / by Andrew Nebinger. 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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    of the abundant suppuration and vast irritation of the pustules? It is then the abundant suppuration and vast irritation of the pustules, which produce the flagging of the system, dry tongue, weakened pulse, etc. If we know that the abundant suppuration and vast irritation of the pustules produce so great a drain upon the system, as to make it probable that these alarming effects may arise, why not anticipate and prevent them from making their appearance, by giving the nutritious diet proportionate to the requirements of the system, at a period so early in the course of the disease as will cause, by their digestion, the blood to be so constituted as to meet the requirements of the system supporting it, under the abundant suppuration and vast irritation of the pus- tules ? Permit me here to ask, if the patient up to the time of the development of the unfavorable symptoms of flagging of the system, dry tongue, etc., had been receiving only gruel, toast and tea, vegetable broths, and cracker panada, if the development of these conditions do not of themselves prove that such a dietetic regimen was insufficient and unequal to the requirements of the system; and the recommendation of a more nutritious diet, with the hope of controlling the bad effects of the abundant sup- puration and vast irritation of the pustules is not a full and complete recognition of the truth, that a smallpox patient to be brought safely through his attack must be supplied with food of such quality and in such quantities as would be given to sustain the system in any other case, where there is a large amount of pus generated, and a large quantity of tissue to be reproduced ? Suppose after these unfavorable symptoms have set up, we should succeed in saving our patient by the generous and nutritious diet; would we not have accomplished this by improving the quality of the patient's blood—by increasing the quantity and quality of its fibrin, its plasma, its vitalizing and sustaining ele- ments ? Would the necessity for doing this have existed at this period of the disease, if the patient had been using good and generous nutriment in large quantities, from the period the pap- ules made their appearance? If a generous diet would arrest the bad symptoms we have referred to, would not such a diet by keeping the blood well up in its nutrifying elements, have largely tended to prevent the origin of these morbid phenomena ? 2