A report on spasmodic cholera / prepared by a committee under the direction of the counsellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

  • Massachusetts Medical Society.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on spasmodic cholera / prepared by a committee under the direction of the counsellors of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/212 (page 3)
    SPASMODIC CHOLERA. The subject of this report has been fully considered and dis¬ cussed by many learned men of different nations in Europe. They have sought to throw light upon it by their researches into the writings of former ages, and they have carefully collected the observations which have been made on the present epidemic as regards its history, its nature and character, and as to the treatment best adapted to it. Their labors have been em¬ bodied in several valuable works, and the general results of them have been brought forward in a popular form in reviews and other writings. In this report there cannot be expected a statement of anything not known to those who have already studied the subject. Nor can it be expected that every circumstance in the history of the wide-spread epidemic should be brought into notice. It is not intended to repeat those re¬ ferences to, and quotations from, the writers of former times, which have already been often copied. It is designed, however, to give the statements necessary to a due understanding of the subject, and to make from them such inferences as shall seem to be legitimate. In all ages diseases of the alimentary canal have been found frequent in warm climates ; and the same in the warm seasons of temperate climates. In the discharges which attend those diseases, bile attracts the attention most strongly, its characters being much more marked, than those of the other natural secre¬ tions which find their outlet in the alimentary canal. Hence many disorders of the stomach and bowels have ordinarily been denominated bilious. One of these disorders has espe¬ cially been distinguished as the bilious disease, otcholera morbus; and it was so named from the belief that it was caused by an