The subcutaneous injection of quinine in malarious fevers : a paper read before the International Medical Congress at Amsterdam, in September, 1883 / by J.B. Scriven.

  • Scriven, J.B.
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The subcutaneous injection of quinine in malarious fevers : a paper read before the International Medical Congress at Amsterdam, in September, 1883 / by J.B. Scriven. 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.

    4/12 (page 4)
    of the numerous accidents that attended it, such as abscess, ulcera- tion, and tetanus; indeed, these led, after a time, to the prohibition of this mode of using quinine in the European army in India. I myself, though not at the time practising among European soldiers, but among the natives of India, voluntarily abandoned it for the same reason. In the year 1872, however, being then civil surgeon of Lahore, and finding the fever of that year of a peculiarly obstinate and virulent type, I determined to give the hypodermic method another trial in a different way. I learned that my friend Dr. J. E. T. Aitchison, CLE., then civil surgeon of Rawulpindee, had adopted this method with good effect in the Rawulpindee jail, and that his solution was made as follows; quinine sixty grains, tartaric acid thirty grains, distilled water sufficient to make three fluid drachms. I procured a syringe invented by Dr. Thomas Buzzard, of London (described in the Zancef of March 20, 1869, p. 397), arid set to work with Dr. Aitchison's solution. The fever of 1872 and the following years furnished me with a great number of cases, probably one hundred or more, uncontrollable by any ordinary method, and I found that hypo- dermic injections, on this new plan, were very often successful, and very seldom productive of unpleasant consequences. From these consequences tetanus has been completely eliminated, no case having occurred to me up to the present time, since I first began to use the tartaric solution in 1872. .■•■<■- I was occasionally troubled, however, during the three years from 1872 to 1875, by abscess, sloughing, and ulceration. The liability to these was a great drawback, which prompted me to inquire carefully into their causes, and I found ; ist, that abscess was apt to form, if there was sufficient bleeding to distend the small subcutaneous -cavity produced by injecting the quinine ; 2nd, that there was liability to a slough or ulcer, if tlic injected solution came too close to the surface of the skin. Of this ''.:.i-rgerous proximity I sometimes became aware before I had completed the operation, by a blue discoloration taking i)lace,