Contributions to the pathology of cholera, embracing its history, modifications, stages, and treatment, as the disease appeared in the Bombay Presidency, from 1818 to 1842 / [James Bird].

  • Bird, James, 1797-1864
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the pathology of cholera, embracing its history, modifications, stages, and treatment, as the disease appeared in the Bombay Presidency, from 1818 to 1842 / [James Bird]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. The first portion of the following observations on Cholera, was written for the London Journal of Medicine, at a time when public alarm, for the expected advent of the disease, had begun to subside; and it was more an object, with the author, to investigate what accumulative Indian and European experience had taught him, relative to the Pathology and Treatment of an obscure malady, than to court notoriety for the originality of his opinions, or speciality of his therapeutics. The lapse, since then, of nearly five months, has only been accompanied by the onward march of Cholera, and a progressive increase of mortality, notwithstanding the extended application of sani¬ tary measures, and the exaggerated expectations of benefit from them. But as the various specifics, proposed for the treatment of this disease, have, from day to day, been used more and more empirically, and without that foundation in intelligible therapeutic principles, deemed necessary for other ills that flesh is heir to, it is time for us to inquire, whether the rational system of medicine, founded on a knowledge of morbid alterations of structure, and chemical change of fluids, be not more necessary to secure success in treating Cholera, than the examples even of other complicated diseases. The authors own experience on this head, coincides with the well-weighed opinion of Professor Andrew Buchanan, of Glasgow; that “ there is no disease which admits less of being treated empirically, than Cholera.11 A lucid arrangement of the symptoms, which indicate its modifications and stages, viewed in relation to ascertained morbid changes of both the animal solids and fluids, and the known physiological laws of their vitality, seems to hold out the only ground of hope left us to secure a better knowledge of the disease, and a more rational system of treat-