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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    “ We have got a most curious disease raging here, just now, more like angina pectoris than any thing else. But it proves fatal in an hour or two. In fact, though eight or ten of my personal friends have died from it, I have not yet been in time to see a case while life remained. You knew several of them while here. Old Mahomed Aghaiba, Chederakee, Ismael Beg, &c.” The only thing that I have to remark of that dis- ease, before proceeding to a detail of cases, is, that in the one I am about to describe, the fits appeared to be always accompanied by a nervous excited ac- tion of the heart and arteries, periodical, but neither preceded by chill nor succeeded by perspiration. Those who suffered from numbness and sleeping of the hands and feet alone, had always more or less palpitation of the heart, at the same time, some- times amounting to pain. The first patient I saw, which was a short time before the receipt of Dr. Ross’s letter, was Syad Khan, who happened to be my neighbour. Having stomach-ache, to which he was subject, he took ten drops of the oil of peppermint, instead of the spirit which he was in the habit of taking, and it produced inflammation of the stomach. I applied 30 leeches to the epigastrium, by which, and other means, the inflammation was subdued. He was convalescent and in good spirits, only considerably reduced in strength, when he was suddenly attacked, about ten at night of the 20th of January, with a fit resem- bling epilepsy; became insensible, and died in half