Remarks on the history and treatment of delirium tremens / [John Ware].

  • Ware, John, 1795-1864
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the history and treatment of delirium tremens / [John Ware]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ON DELIRIUM TREMENS. Patients are seldom without some unnatural sensa¬ tion in the head. This, in many cases, amounts to a se\ ere headache ; and may be the first symptom of which complaint is made. Sometimes it is only a dizziness, heaviness, or sense of confusion. If the patient, even in the height of the delirium, be asked how he is, he perhaps answers abruptly, that he is “ Pretty well,” “ quite smartbut that he “ feels badly about the head and he seldom fails to ac¬ knowledge some feeling of this kind, at whatever pe¬ riod of the case inquiry is made. In one instance the patient complained that sur¬ rounding objects appeared to him to move to and fro; but he was aware that this arose from a morbid affec¬ tion of the sense of vision, and did not confound it with the delirious ideas which occupied his mind. The pulse varies much in frequency in differ¬ ent cases, and at different periods of the same case. At first it is often of the natural standard, becoming rapid as the case proceeds. Sometimes it is frequent from the first. Almost always in the height of the paroxysm it becomes very rapid, rising to 130, 140, or even 150. Still in a few cases it continues at the natural standard, or a little above it, to the termina¬ tion of the disease in sleep ; and such cases rarely do otherwise than well. If the pulse do not rise above 100, we may regard the case as almost certain to do well, and the danger increases as the pulse rises. Still even a quick pulse is not a very fatal symptom, since persons often recover whose pulse has risen to 130