Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor.

  • Smith, Samuel Hanbury, 1810-1894.
Date:
[1850]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of the epidemic religious monomania in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842 / by the editor. 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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    it was a general custom among the Babylonians, to expose their sick persons to the view of stranger-travelers, in order to learn of them whether they had been afflicted with the same distemper, and by what remedies they had been cured. The cus- tom in the days of the famous Hippocrates, was, for all per- sons that had been sick, and were cured, to put up a tablet in the temple of iEsculapius, wherein they gave an account of the remedies that had restored them to their health. That cel- ebrated physician caused all these inscriptions and memorials to be copied out, and derived great advantages from them. Let our tablets be — our Medical Journals, and our temples — our libraries, that advantage may be derived from recorded experience in the treatment of disease. No disease to which human flesh is heir to, makes such rapid and dreadful inroads upon every vital organ of life, as does Asiatic Cholera. It has its primordial origin in the nervous system; its secondary, in the alimentary canal. And it is with a view to the restoration of the last power of these two systems, that our treatment must mainly be directed. The utter paralysis of the vis nervosa, causes the flood-gates of every part of the body to open passively and discharge their contents into the stomach and alimentary canal, whence from this gulf it is carried off, leaving the system drained, withered and dead; as in like manner we see a frail flower, its moist- ure extracted, dying beneath the rays of the burning sun. And here it will be said, that the system must be replenished with that of which it has been drained; not so! And this is the point at which our treatment begins. This is the rock on which I believe that most, if not all, of my cotemporaries of the profession founder. In pouring fluids into the stomach in cholera, you do not replenish the capillary vessels ; nor, more important still, the great vessels— the blood-vessels —and thus supply them with the stimuli of which they have sustained so great a loss. The nervous filaments distributed to these smaller and greater vessels, are paralysed ; and the last drop is pouring forth to the common receptacle and outlet — the stomach and alimentary canal. What is to be done? Give the patient no fluids. To this will be answered, as the patient often says—Doctor, I shall die if I don't have drink. Not so; you will die if you have it. Better give nothing. But what then is to be done? Give medicine in the dry form, and apply mustard cataplasms externally—to the limbs and feet- over the stomach, bowls and heart. I have said, give no flu- ids. I mean to say, give none so long as there is any dis- charge from the stomach or bowels. After this has ceased, o-ive strong green tea or coffee, and the camphor and ammo-