The curability of consumption : being the reprint of a series of papers, presenting the most prominent and important practical points in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disease / by Francis H. Ramadge.

  • Ramadge, Francis Hopkins, 1793-1867.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The curability of consumption : being the reprint of a series of papers, presenting the most prominent and important practical points in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the disease / by Francis H. Ramadge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    was neglected. It did not, I thought, become me as a visitor to enter minutely into the several cases; still I found, without an exception, that where any real improve- ment had taken place it could be traced to some antago- nistic affection existing before admission into the Hospital. In the first ward I entered, which was that for female?, I requested the nurse to show me some of her good cases, and she immediately complied by presenting two young women who were regarded as satisfactory instances of amendment. They looked apparently well; but I discovered, on questioning them, that both of them had been attacked with symptoms of consumption three years antecedently. It had been considered that the taking of cod-liver oil had produced a favourable effect on their cases ; but I felt satis- fied that their existence was due to an antagonism arresting their disease, and which was the sole cause of their being alive at the period to which I allude. The same inquiry was extended to the other wards, and the result was exactly the same. Though to cod-liver oil was ascribed the credit of producing substantial benefit among the patients, I left the Institution under the firm impression that this article, which possesses no virtue beyond being nutritive, was not in reality the agent to which might be attributed the pro- longation of their existence, but to some one or more of the antagonisms effected by Nature. I have no doubt that the warm air continuously supplied to the patients in the Hospital had the effect, in some cases of consumption mixed with bronchitis, of moderating the secretion from the bronchial mucous membrane, and the tuberculous cavities where they existed, and thus increasing the flesh of the patients, served also to augment their strength. Moreover, the improved diet, inactivity, along