A treatise on the diseases of the chest and on mediate auscultation / by R.T.H. Laennec ; translated from the latest French edition, with notes and a sketch of the author's life, by John Forbes.

  • Laennec, R. T. H. (René Théophile Hyacinthe), 1781-1826.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases of the chest and on mediate auscultation / by R.T.H. Laennec ; translated from the latest French edition, with notes and a sketch of the author's life, by John Forbes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    162/774 (page 134)
    and among others, because I am convinced from many com- parative trials, that leeching from the last mentioned place is not more effective as a derivative, than from the other two, particularly if the blood is taken from both at the same time. Dry cupping or with lancets, sinapisms, stimulating foot-baths, may be usefully employed after venesection, or in cases where this is not necessary. Rest and absolute silence, a cool air, abstinence from wine and stimulant food, and a regimen proportioned in strictness to the severity and extent of the haemorrhage, are accessory measures by no means to be neglected. The same remark applies to the use of mucilaginous drinks, such as decoction of the roots of grande consonde or marsh mallow, rice water, solution of gum arable or tragacanth, &c *. Acids and astrin- gents aie also commonly employed, particularly Veau de Rabel, or the sulphuric acid sufficiently diluted, alum, tormentilla, bistort, kino, pomegranate bark, and, of late, rhatany root and its extract. These means are more hurtful than benefi- cial at the commencement of the haemorrhage; but they may sometimes be advantageously employed in old cases, which are combined with an atonic state of the system, or when the blood is only slightly coloured and feebly concrescible. In this last case I have sometimes used with benefit the dry sul- phate of iron. To derive advantage from astringents they must be given in larger doses than is usual. I give, for exam- ple, from one to four drachms of alum in a pint of any sweet mucilaginous drink f. When an active haemoptysis is checked, Sydenham advises the patient to be purged, and looks upon this means as most likely to prevent a relapse. I have always adopted the same practice, (except when evidently contra-indicated,) and, as it appeared, frequently with advantage. Obstinate spittings of blood, which have resisted repeated bleedings, sometimes ter- minate instantaneously under the effect of a purgative. * These latter measures, as indeed the common usage of practitioners, are in direct opposition to the principle of cure so much insisted on by Mr. Davidson in his Ob- servations on the Pulmonary System, viz. that of withholding every kind of fluid. But it is evident that his practice is founded on a misconception of the physiology of nutrition in respect of liquids.—Transl, t A saturated solution of alum has recently been sti-ongly recommended by Dr. Scudamore, as a styptic. See his work on the blood, p. 161.—Transl.