Arrest of cholera by dilute acid and sanitary observance ; Treatment of cholera outbreaks.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
1883
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Arrest of cholera by dilute acid and sanitary observance ; Treatment of cholera outbreaks. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The homologies, structural and functional of the living frame, go to show that the treatment, with whatever exceptions, suitable in single cases of cholera, is also successfully available in many, and that the apathy neglect and ignorance, so fatal in individuals, prove not less destructive to multitudes.* Few diseases, when dealt with early, are more remediable than is cholera, or so intractable when the malady gains a certain head unchecked.f I found it, for the most part, com- municated or communicable, directly or indirectly, from individual to individual. But all excreta are dangerous, and should be at once destroyed or rendered harmless. In the event of a cholera outbreak, and holding in view the efficacy of prophylaxis, I should at once ad- minister, from house to house, to every adult, children in proportion, a daily half drachm dose of dilute sulphuric acid. And further, I would place the dilute acid at every street corner to be given free of charge to all comers. Thirty drops of laudanum, administered at the very onset of cholera, is perhaps not less efficient, but opiates are relatively costly as well as liable to be taken in unsafe doses,! a risk from which dilute sulphuric acid is exempt. This is also one of the cheapest and most efficient of remedies, seeing that a pound of strong sulphuric acid, costing about a penny, diluted ten times, and in half drachm doses, confers potential safety on more than two thousand persons. All plagues, by undoing so far as possible the causes immediately and generally productive of them, might, I believe, with a firm hand and under medical direction be stamped out speedily in any locality. That this is practicable with regard to cholera, turning to account the means here indicated, I entertain no doubt whatever. * The poor indeed are miserable sufferers. I once had twenty cases from a wretched lane of only six houses, while in whole streets of a better class of houses there would not perhaps be more than one or two. . f I have gone to places where the dead were lying and people going about uncom- plaining, yet labouring under diarrhea, quite unaware of the extreme danger of their position. In Glasgow, where medicine had been exhibited during house to house visitation, to persons labouring under the diarrhea which ushers in cholera, there was but one death in each 1400 cases. That is to say, had the diarrhea not been as thus arrested, there might have been for every 1400 cases, 1400 deaths instead of one. X During the course of some inquiries made to determine the state of the internal organs in fatal cases of cholera, I once detected ten grains of solid opium in the stomach, how much of fluid opium or laudanum, one could not say. HENRY MACCORMAC, M.D.