Volume 1

A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds.

Date:
1866-1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of medicine / edited by J. Russell Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    141/976 (page 121)
    in combination with opium. Here are the results, derived entirely from official sources :— Under the old system in Bengal the mortality among Europeans during the forty-two years, from 1812 to 1853-54, amounted to 88'2 in the thousand. During 1860, when large doses of ipecacuanha were given to the almost complete exclusion of all other methods of cure, the mortality was 28'87 in the thousand. In the Madras presidency under the old treatment the mortality from the disease during seventeen years was 71 per thousand treated, hut when ipecacuanha was largely used, as above described, it fell to 13-5 in the thousand. In the 44th Begiment, quartered in Eort St. George, Madras, Surgeon Mee treated 68 cases “ in the ordinary way ”—with a mor- tality of 6, or 8-8 per cent. Subsequently 59 were treated with large doses of ipecacuanha and all recovered. Mr. Docker, surgeon of the 2d Battalion of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, to whom is undoubtedly due the honour of recalling ns to a more rational and successful way of treating dysentery, after he had re- course at the Mauritius to the plan of using large doses of ipecacuanha lost only one out of fifty-three cases. I have not space to enter into the complete history of ipecacuanha as a remedy m dysentery. I must refer my readers to an excellent and exhaustive paper on the subject by Dr. Blacklock of the Madras army, m the Madras Quarterly Journal of Medical Science and to a paper on the same subject by Dr. Ewart of the Bengal army in the sixteenth number of the Indian Annals of Medicine. Known from remote times m Peru as a remedy for Dysentery, it was introduced mto this country as the Radix Anti-Dysenterica. It appears in have been used in Europe in the treatment of the disease more as an adjuvant to other remedies than trusted to alone In nro cess of time ipecacuanha came to be used almost exclusively as an emetic and expectorant, and, in combination with opium as a diaphoretic m the form of Dover’s powder. In the Madras mesi dency for many years before the publication of Mr. Docker’s naner it was used as a remedy in dysentery, chiefly after the example of the late Drs. Geddes and Mortimer, and, as I can testify from twenty two years experience of its use, with a marked supermntv nZr plan of treatment by mercurials. The great merit of Mr DoZ wi the introduction of the plan of using it in the W wl| G? r doses of which I have spoken, with the gratifying results cm ff(ftlve It is probable that ipecacuanha owes much* nf l g r ? above- tins disease to faction as an evacuant. It is a bloo^pur^tTf “ effect™ kind. It appears to' iiTcime °f ?* alimentary canal, as well as that of the liver and m ,7b th Jwho]o use tormina and tenesmus disappear and feculent £777“ ; 'mder its quickly restored thnn lw , ! ' en^evacuations are more quickly restored than by any other known remedy!'