Cholera, its character and treatment : with remarks on the identity of the Indian and English, and a particular reference to the disease as now existent at Newcastle and its neighbourhood / by Charles Turner Thackrah.

  • Thackrah, Charles Turner, 1795-1833.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cholera, its character and treatment : with remarks on the identity of the Indian and English, and a particular reference to the disease as now existent at Newcastle and its neighbourhood / by Charles Turner Thackrah. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    preaching dissolution, which accompany our common maladies. They depend on a transpiration or exhalation of some of the constituents of the Mood, through vessels relaxed by extreme disease. We have nov^ come to the end of the symptoms, in the progressive sinking of the vital powers. Convulsions have been seen after apparent death. One of the physicians employed by government men- tioned to me an instance which occurred to him in India. Entering a ward in which a patient had died some hours before, he found the corpse with the feet tied down to the bed frame. On his asking the reason, the attendants stated that the deceased kicked off the clothes with his legs, and affrighted the other patients! To the phy- siologist this is by no means a strange relation. Death is a gradual, not a sudden change ; organs, or systems of organs, die in succession. The miserable paralytic has long laboured under death of the great bulk of the ner- vous system of animal life, yet the brain and ganglions live; circidation and respiration are maintained; and the mind has its consciousness and vigour. The muscles of slaughtered animals long retain their irritability. I have found them contract on the application of galvanism six hours after decapitation. John Himter saw evidences of vitality in the uterus of a cow, more than 24 hours after its removal from the body. In the human subject, the iris sometimes moves long after apparent death. In a female, who died suddenly in the night, it was strongly affected eight hours after, by the light of a candle. The same phe- nomenon I also remarked long after apparent death, in a man who was killed by a blow on the head. Thus, also, in Cholera it appears that the muscles of the limbs live, when the vitality of the nobler organs has ceased. The last convulsion and final contraction of the muscles has been known to continue long in the choleric corpse. An D