Practical remarks on the endemic dysentery of Colombo, island of Ceylon / by J.W. Fleming.

  • Fleming, Jim (James William)
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical remarks on the endemic dysentery of Colombo, island of Ceylon / by J.W. Fleming. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/12 (page 10)
    remittent or intermittent fever ran liigh, as is vs itnessed perhaps oftener at Kandy than elsewhere, I have not infrc(piently increased this to twenty and thirty grains tw'ice a day, with a success over the disease as satisfactory as it was gratifying. If the tormina and teneHrnus, or the calls to stool, prove troublesome, after the use of the warm water injections, these should be aided by one composed of a drachm of finely powdered Acetate of Lead and the same of Tincture of Opium, or ten grains of Nitrate of Silver and three grains of Opium. Occasion- ally a large hot poultice of rice flour, or the like, may be laid over the whole abdomen with advantage. The employment of Mercurial ‘preparations, as appears to me too indiscriminately recommended by Indian practitioners, is very rarely needed, and requires the greatest caution, in consequence of the scorbutic tendency of many of the cases, particularly in the older soldiers, and those debilitated by long insular residence ; for unlike India there is no “cold season” in Ceylon whereby to recruit the lost health of the enervated “exotic European.”^ The only cases in which the “ Mercurial treatment” can be advantageously used are those occurring amongst the strong and plethoric recruits, but recently arrived, with whom, the treatment by Calomel, Opium and Qui- nine, with general blood-letting, and the daily use of the warm water injections, will often act “like a charm, but cannot, or very rarely, be repeated a second time, at least after the third or fifth year of residence, without *■ “ Perpetual Summer may be said to prevail throughout the “ year, varied only by the occasional dilFerence of a few degrees in “ temperature, or by a change from dry to wet weather, or the re- verse.” The difference of temperature at Colombo rarely exceeds 16”, and is very seldom so much as 10”. A Fahrenheits Thermometer ex- posed to the full influence of the sun indicates a range from 135” to 140.”