On blood letting : an account of the curative effects of the abstraction of blood : with rules for employing both local and general blood-letting in the treatment of diseases / by James Wardrop.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On blood letting : an account of the curative effects of the abstraction of blood : with rules for employing both local and general blood-letting in the treatment of diseases / by James Wardrop. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    almost every instance this will be found to arise from some part of the alimentary canal being in a de- ranged state, which state ought to have been cor- rected previous to administering the specific remedy. The most useful medicines often fall into disrepute from want of such attention, whilst under other cir- cumstances the dose must be changed, as well as the form of administering it. I do not mean to affirm that there are no individuals with whom particular medicines disagree. On the contrary, there are per- sons in whom cinchona, mercury, iron, and even milder drugs, as rhubarb, senna, and many saline me- dicines, have a decidedly pernicious effect. Such instances, however, are only to be considered as ex- ceptions. Diseases, I have already remarked, assume an infinite variety of character, not only in persons of different ages and constitutions, but also in people living in different districts of a country, and in diffe- rent ranks of society. The limited observations, therefore, which are made on the treatment of pa- tients in the wards of an hospital, have often had, the imputation of being incorrect from the same remedies having been used with very different eflfects in other classes of the community. I have often heard medical men, whose practice has been con- fined to one class of persons, such as soldiers or sailors, and who have acquired great expertness and skill in treating that particular class—I have often heard such practitioners remark, how different were the systems which they found it necessary to pursue when they were called on to treat the diseases of other classes of individuals, particularly those of