Remarks on the history and etiology of cholera / by David Craigie.

Date:
[1833?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the history and etiology of cholera / by David Craigie. 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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    I am willing to admit, that in some instances the peculiar characters of the discharges have been overlooked by some ob- servers, and that this has given some ground to the assertion that, though ordinary cholera has been long known, the virulent form of the disease, with the sero-albuminous discharges, and collapsed state of the vascular system with which we have become of late so familiar, is entirely new. I trust that before the remarks in the present paper are concluded, I shall show that even this mode of explanation cannot be employed with propriety. It may seem perhaps, on the ground now stated, superfluous to attach much importance to the descriptions of the ancient phy- sicians. I must remark, however, that the writings of these au- thors, present unequivocal proofs that they were familiar with a disease which, in all its essential features, resembled accurately the exquisite cases of virulent or malignant cholera. Aretaeus, commonly named the Cappadocian, is the first writer whose authority I shall adduce on this point. This phy- sician, whose age is uncertain, but who is on good evidence, be- lieved to have flourished previous to the time of the Emperor Titus, and not later than that of Trajan or Adrian, describes under the name of cholera, a most acute disease, (o^urarov xaxov) in which the matter of the whole frame, is carried by a retro- grade motion (craX/vogcos peer,) into the oesophagus, stomach, and bowels; in which the vomited matters are watery, and ejected with great force, and the intestinal discharges, though feculent, are fluid and mucous; in which, as the disease proceeds, the muscles of the arms and legs are cramped, the fingers become incurvated (duxrukot xa/MTjXoi) the nails blue (omyj.g mkihvoi) the extremities cold, and the whole body stiff (ro okov gr/udag,) and covered with sweat; in which urineis not secreted, because the fluids are diverted into the intestines (brro rqg bv ro svrsgov rojv vyguv fisroysrsoffiug) the voice is lost, and the pulse becomes very small and frequent, as in syn- cope ; and in which, after continued ineffectual efforts to vomit and calls to stool without discharging any thing, death takes place by convulsion, suffocation and retching, xsvu.) * It is singular, that while he specifies the watery vomiting, and the wratery and mucous stools, Aretseus states, that yellow bile is discharged both ways in the established disease, and black bile while the extremities are cold and blue,—a statement into which he has been led, I conceive, by his desire not to depart too widely from the definition of Hippocrates and his followers. It is on the contrary remarkable, that before the fatal event, he states, that there are constant efforts to vomit without discharg- ing anything, and calls to stool equally ineffectual, (r^odu/Mai reimtJjubttg, fygui, a%aXo/) dry and without fluid. That in this disease no bile was discharged at this period, is manifest from a direction APETAIOT KATiriA&OK.OT mpi Airtav km Jxjuuan’ km X/>sm- kuv naSoo Aiiir. Kt<f. t ■*(£/ Lugd. Bat. 1735, fol.