Institutes and practice of surgery: being outlines of a course of lectures (Volume 1).

  • Gibson, William, 1788-1868.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Institutes and practice of surgery: being outlines of a course of lectures (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    is not a single instance known of one of these people ever having taken the plague, although the disease frequently rages at Tunis in the most frightful manner. The use of olive oil has been highly extolled by many writers as a remedy for the bites of poisonous serpents. Dr. Miller* of South Carolina, relates the case of a man who was bitten in the sole of the foot by a very large rattlesnake. Although very little time elapsed before he reached the patient, his head and face were prodigiously swelled, and the latter black. His tongue was enlarged and out of his mouth; his eyes as if start- ing from their sockets; his senses gone, and every appearance of immediate suffocation. Two table-spoonsful of olive oil were immediately got down, but with great difficulty. The effect was almost instantaneous; in thirty minutes it operated freely by the mouth and bowels, and in two hours the patient could arti- culate, and soon after recovered. The quantity of oil taken in- ternally, and applied to the wound did not exceed eight spoons- ful. In the course of twelve years, Dr. Miller has met with several similar cases, in which the oil has proved equally suc- cessful. Mr. Oliverf has detailed a number of experiments in proof of the efficacy of warm oil, when applied to the wound made by the bite of a viper; but Linnseus| found it quite ineffi- cient. The volatile alkali was, for a long time, in very general use as an antidote against the poison of different serpents; but the experiments of Fontana are calculated to show, that so far from being useful, the symptoms produced by the bite of the viper were increased either by the internal exhibition of the medicine or by its external application. On the other hand, the late Dr. Ramsey§ of South Carolina, one of the most distinguished physi- cians our country can boast of, has declared that the volatile alkali properly administered, will, in a short time, cure the bite of any snake, or the sting of a spider, or any other venomous insect, is a Medical fact as well established as that the Peruvian bark will cure an intermittent fever. Dr. Ramsey's declara- tion is founded upon the result of several cases, wherein patients have suffered from the bites of rattlesnakes, and have been cured, * New York Medical Repository, vol. ii. p. 242. t Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxxix. p. 310. t Amceniiates Academicae, vol. xi. p. 407.