Practical illustrations of the scarlet fever, measles, and pulmonary consumption : with observations on the efficacy of sulphureous waters in chronic complaints / by John Armstrong.

  • Armstrong, John, 1784-1829.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical illustrations of the scarlet fever, measles, and pulmonary consumption : with observations on the efficacy of sulphureous waters in chronic complaints / by John Armstrong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    those plans liacl been separately pursued. It is in the early, decisive, yet moderate use of the lancet, speedily followed up by purgatives and alteratives, that we shall alike avoid rashness and timidity ; and it is in a judicious combination of these three agents, that a method v/ill be formed far superior to any plan founded on an exclusive preference for one remedy. If it be injudicious and dangerous to bleed too often and too largely in adults, it is still more so in children, many of whom have been lost from a disregard of the golden medium as to venesection. Were it inquired why large bleedings are more dangerous to children than to adults, I should answer, that in the former, they induce greater nervous irritation, and greater constitu- tional debility; and these effects may be marked, by a short, weak, hurried, anxious respiration, and by a pulse which has a sort of tremulous and con- vulsive rapidity. Large losses of blood in children bring on an excessive re-action of the heart and arteries, different from that which existed before the operation. It is a re-action combined with an irritability of the nervous system, and with the agitated struggles of wasted strength ; and there- fore it can only be allayed by soothing means, such as opiates, perfect quietness, free ventilation, or the tepid bath. But if such are the perils of excess, we have no- thing to dread from seasonable and moderate vene- section in children, when they labour under fevers combined with inflammation ; and in that variety