The hydropathic encyclopedia : a system of hydropathy and hygiene in eight parts ... designed as a guide to families and students, and a text-book for physicians / by R. T. Trall, M.D.

  • Trall, R. T. (Russell Thacher), 1812-1877.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hydropathic encyclopedia : a system of hydropathy and hygiene in eight parts ... designed as a guide to families and students, and a text-book for physicians / by R. T. Trall, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    only by virtue of the alcoholic stimulant. It is easy to account for this delusion. When the fever is up, the physician is afraid of death from its violence; but he knows the patient will not die, in ordinary cases, until the cold stage of the paroxysm becomes permanent. When the fever is down—that is, in the cold stage—the patient is pale, cool or cold, the features sunken, and the pulse low, natural co.-.sequences of the previous febrile excitement. The organism now requires rest, quiet, perhaps nourishment. But the doctor, fearing this depression will end in death, kindles up the fever again. So long as the system will respond to stimuli, so long as the vital powers will manifestly resist the morbid impression of the stimulant, the body is not absolutely death-struck, and the doctor has the satisfaction of knowing that the patient is not now dying. But this evidence of his existing vitality is the expenditure of a part of that vitality, hence, although the stimulant causes him to manifest more signs of life, it also hasteno or endangers his death, for the simple reason that it causes a further waste of vitality. But it may be objected that our theory of vital resistance, though applicable to those agents which produce evacuation, or increased action of the circulating system, will not explain the phenomena produced by the narcotics, which operate in a very different mannei. Let us see. Medical books tell us that opium in small doses suppresses all secretions except the cutaneous, which it promotes. What is this but the effort of the vital powers, all concentrated, as it were, to expel it through the skin ? In large doses opium always creates nausea, and usually vomiting, evincive of the effort of the vital powers to expel it at once from the stomach. The pure narcotics, as henbane, belladonna, stra- monium, cicuta, prussic acid, etc., are really evacuarrta in relation to the nervous power. Being so deadly in their influence, they are met with an energy proportioned to their potency of dose, and the skock, as it were, is often sufficient to destroy the organism ie a moment, like that from a Leyden jar, or a surcharged electric cloud. In very small doses the pure narcotics are thrown off more or less by all the excre- tory organs, but more especially the skin. In conclusion, we may find a convincing illustration in the effects of the very Sampson of the allopathic materia medica—mercury. No medical books pretend to explain the modus operandi Cf this drug, but all agree that it promotes all the secretions of lite body- It is this gen- eral effect upon all the secretions which causes mercury to be regarded as a universal alterative, and administered, too, so freei3- and so fatally in almost all the diseases incident to humanity. But how and why does mercury promote the activity of st the secreting organs ? Because