The preparations of conium maculatum of the British pharmacopoeia, 1864 / by John Harley.

  • Harley, John, 1833-1921.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The preparations of conium maculatum of the British pharmacopoeia, 1864 / by John Harley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    Up to tlie year 1879 the only disease I had contracted was a slight attack of measles in childhood,and for the three years during which I was resident in the Stockport Infirmary and Fever Wards and the twelve years during which I was attached to the London Fever Hospital I did not experience any febrile attacks. During some seasons my scarlet fever wards at the London Fever Hospital were crowded with the severest forms of the disease, many having sanious discharges from the nose and ears, and others suffering from suppuration of the cervical glands and surrounding connective tissue. After visiting these wards I have from time to time spent an hour or two in the post-mortem examination of patients dead of the disease, and on two occasions I have accident- ally inoculated myself with the warm blood of a patient who had died an hour before of scarlatina.1 On one of these occasions my assistant, Dr. William Henderson, also wounded himself, and I had no sooner taken the scalpel from him than it slipped, glanced off my nail, scratched tlie back of my thumb, and finally punctured the fold of skin between the thumb and forefinger. We sucked our wounds, bound them up and proceeded with our task, which was only just begun. Neither of us took the least harm and our wounds healed by the first intention. But let me say by way of parenthesis that we were not insusceptible—at least Dr. Henderson was not—for, a year or more after, in making a post-mortem examination of a case of peritonitis for me he pricked his finger, the puncture suppurated, lymphatic inflammation spread up the fore- arm, and a fortnight after the accident he was extreme])1 ill with fever, which bore a strong resemblance to scarlatina and was followed by general desquamation. As to myself, let me ask your attention to the sequel. Eight years after my connection with the London Fever Hospital ceased and nine years after my last inoculation, 1 The post-mortems were made thus soou after the death on tlie fifth day of the fever in order to ascertain, as I supposed, that death was caused by the clotting of blood in the heart, indicated by the suddenly deranged action of the pulse.