Some account of an epidemic which prevailed at Teheran, in the months of January and February 1842 in a letter to Geo. Jos. Bell, M.D., Travelling Fellow of Oxford / by C.W. Bell.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of an epidemic which prevailed at Teheran, in the months of January and February 1842 in a letter to Geo. Jos. Bell, M.D., Travelling Fellow of Oxford / by C.W. Bell. 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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    in a state of insensibility, the mouth drawn to the left side, and that side of the body paralytic. He had been in this state about six hours, but little account of his state previous to the attack could be collected from his servants. The pulse was rapidly sinking and nervous—now quick and irritable, now soft, weak and scarcely perceptible. A few tea- spoonsfuls of sether. sulph. co. were given, and some 5 or 6 ounces of blood drawn from the arm, after which the pulse became steady. He now had an enema of 5ij of assafcetida, which was retained—and he continued in the same insensible paralytic state till 2 a.m., having been comatose for about fifteen hours. He then awoke as from a sleep, and walked to stool. In the morning I found him perfectly sensible, and nothing remaining of the paralysis but a sense of weariness in the limbs. He then took ol. ricini ^ifs, and had no return of his complaint. According to his own account, early in the morn- ing he had been seized with the most urgent desire to make water, but found himself unable to do so— he continued to make frequent attempts in vain, and the agony of the urgency he describes as insuf- ferable, until he lost his consciousness (apparently about 11 a.m.). When the injection operated, the water came without difficulty. He had no sub- sequent headache, nor any premonitory symptoms, such as sleeping of the hands or feet. At another time, I should have considered this an attack of apoplexy, which from his appearance