Hydropathy as applied to acute disease : illustrated by cases / by T. R. Armitage.

  • Armitage, Thomas Rhodes, 1824-1890.
Date:
MDCCCLII [1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydropathy as applied to acute disease : illustrated by cases / by T. R. Armitage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    77/192 (page 69)
    be better able to understand tbe reasons that induced the generation of physicians succeeding Dr. Currie gradually to abandon it for cold or tepid sponging. On looking through their writings, I find no allusion to the importance of the cold affusion as a means of rousing the patient from stupor. Their only indication for its employment seems to have been increased heat, and they, therefore, probably applied it in many cases in which irritability of the nervous system rendered the practice injurious. The principal objection which they make to its use is, that it “ alarms and fatigues the patient and this objection is well founded, if the affusion be used in all cases of fever indiscriminately, whenever the heat of the body is much increased. I have little doubt that, having been so em- ployed, its effects were noticed in many cases to be pernicious, and the practice was therefore abandoned for that of cold or tepid sponging. The cases in which alone the affusion should be employed are those in which, besides increased heat, there is also considerable stupor, and patients in this state are far too lethargic, and too little alive to what is passing around them.