Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on the present epidemic of typhus / by Robert Perry. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![great prostration, or occasionally moribund on admission, were thus saved from the extra fatigue of being carried up stairs. Dr. Murchison, in his treatise on continued fevers (p. 247), states that 500 cubic feet of space, with 2 cubic feet of ventila- tion per minute, constitute the smallest amount that can be safely allotted to each person. In workhouses the amount of space enforced by the Poor Law Board is 300 cubic feet for a sick ward, or for a dormitory occupied by night only; and 500 cubic feet in a ward occupied by day and night. And again, In hospitals where typhus patients are admitted, there ought to be an allow- ance of at least 1500 cubic feet to each bed. Although under the present arrangement there is nominally only an average of 926 cubic feet of space for each fever patient in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, there is in reality a considerably greater space, as it is not a very common occurrence for all the beds to be occu- pied at one time in a ward, and there is now no reasonable ground of complaint respecting the accommodation. In a large majority of. the cases, the treatment adopted was of the simplest description, and may be said, in a few words, to con- sist of a supporting diet, with good nursing, and constant and careful watching against the supervention of any complications or untoward symptoms—meeting such .complications or symptoms, as they arose, with the treatment deemed most suitable to each individual case. In order to give a fair trial to the acid treatment, so highly recommended by Dr. Murchison and others, I prescribed the nitro- muriatic acid in a considerable number of cases. The theory upon which the use of the mineral acids has been so strongly advocated, appears to be beautifully simple, viz., to neutralize the poison of typhus, which is supposed to be present in the blood as a peculiar compound of ammonia ; since not only is there an increased quantity of ammonia exhaled by the lungs and the skin but also the urine and the discharges from the bowels become highly ammoniacal. In the cases so treated, I must confess that I have not met with that very marked amelioration of the disease which many of the writers on fever have ascribed to the administration of'mineral acids; and in not a few instances, when given in the proportions tion on account of severe griping and diarrhoea. When the acids are cautiously administered in rather smaller doses m conjunction witli a few minims of solution of muriate of mor]Dhia if the bowels be irritable, sweetened with syrup of orano>e peel, and diluted with water, the draught so formed is generalTy](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21947764_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
