A memoir on the treatment of epidemic cholera : read before the members of the French Academy of Sciences with their report thereon / by Joseph Ayre.

  • Ayre, Joseph, 1781-1860.
Date:
[1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memoir on the treatment of epidemic cholera : read before the members of the French Academy of Sciences with their report thereon / by Joseph Ayre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    73/82 (page 39)
    Cholera at Tooting, Surry, in 1849. The first outbreak of cholera in England, was at Tooting in Surry, where upwards of fourteen hundred pauper children were maintained in an establishment provided for that purpose. _ About one hundred and sixty of these children were attacked with this disease, of whom eighty-five were cut off. In a report sent to the “ Lancet” of that year, by their medical attendant, the treatment was represented to be a modification of mine. This modification however, if stfch it'could be termed, consisted in giving half-a-grain of calopiel every half-hour, united with a sixth or a fourth of a grain of opium, to boys of the age of twelve years, washed down with a little brandy and water. Besides this error in regard to the report made of the treatment, there was the further material one of supposing that I gave the calomel in so small a dose that it might be absorbed into the system, and thus act mercurially upon the disease. The gentleman who employed this treatment in a subsequent com- munication, candidly avowed that both in practice and opinion he had mistaken me, and to quote his own words, “ calomel is cer- tainly the remedy on which I place the greatest reliance; and had it not been for the paucity of nurses in the establishment at Tooting, which precluded the possibility, I should have carried out Dr. Ayre’s plan of treatment more fully, when the result, I have no doubt, would have been more satisfactory.” Upon the foregoing report I may observe, that the half-grain of calomel given only every half-hour may have relieved the diarrhoea, where the stage of collapse was impending, for in this way I give it in the diarrhoea, but could be of no service when the disease had become developed. The opinion expressed in the report, that the calomel would be absorbed into the circulation, and was thus to act upon the disease, explains the cause of its being given in so small a dose, and at such wide intervals, and indicates the fear which was entertained, that salivation might ensue from its use. An error unhappily too prevalent at that time, and fatal to that safe and free employment of the medicine which is needed to render it successful. But to illustrate further the difference in the results between respectively the right and the wrong method of the exhibition, I may cite the details of twelve cases of the disease treated at the Western Dispensary, Lisson-grove, London, reported by Dr. Me. Intyre, with his permission to publish them. To all the twelve patients the calomel was given with the expressed intention of giving it in accordance with my method, but, whilst in seven of the cases the true method was adhered to, in the other five it was wholly departed from; and the results were such as I should have anticipated. The seven correctly treated recovered, and without consecutive fever, while the five others were lost. So marked,