A practical essay on the disease generally known under the denomination of delirium tremens : written principally with a view to elucidate its division into distinct stages, and hence to simplify its method of cure / by Andrew Blake.

  • Blake, Andrew.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical essay on the disease generally known under the denomination of delirium tremens : written principally with a view to elucidate its division into distinct stages, and hence to simplify its method of cure / by Andrew Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    a species of delirium that often attends the early accession of typhus fever from contagion, that I have known to be mistaken for inebriety among seamen and soldiers, where habits of intoxication are common : it will somtimes require nice discern- ment to decide,—the vacant stare, the look of idiot- ism, incoherent speech, faltering voice, and tottering walk, are so alike in both cases.” Such symptoms as those just detailed, occurring in persons addicted to intoxication, would induce me to regard them as indicative of the first stage of delirium tremens ; but this author, although treating on the effects of drunkenness, seems to have been totally ignorant of the nature of such a disorder. Within the tropics, and in all countries where rum or other spirits are cheap, and where the soldier, in some instances, is, I may say, perched on the truncated summit of a volcanic cone, as on Fort Charlotte, in the island of St. Vincent, with- out a contiguous spot of level ground to amuse himself upon ; and has, at the same time, as if to try his powers of abstemiousness, a canteen for the sale of spirits established under the same roof with him •—I say that so situated, and only gifted with the ordinary mental resources of those who move in his sphere of life, while he is amply supplied with money to gratify his propensities, it cannot be wondered at, that, after a few years’ residence, what may be called the ebriositatic diathesis should be