Volume 1

A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell.

  • Evanson, Richard T. (Richard Tonson), 1806-1871.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / By R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    403/502 (page 393)
    | popular and common, is altogether inconsistent with an enlarged view of disease, and justifies the apologue of D’Alembert,—the physician being then, truly, a blind man armed with a club, who, as chance directs the weight of his blow, will be certain of annihilating either nature or the disease. A fever being likely by its violence to produce speedy death, is no palliation of the guilt of a physician who ad- ministers a medicine in poisonous doses, even though he may be ingenious enough to construct a theory explaining, satisfactorily to himself, the secundum artem character of the murder he commits.* We are, on these accounts, as well as from the views our own experience has Jed us to adopt, obliged to differ considerably from many of Dr. Armstrong’s positions, although fully impressed with the importance of some of them, and with the general ingenuity of his essay,—circumstances which, of course, only call for a more distinet warning against the dangers into which his theories might lead the inexperienced. Without going at any greater length into the opinions of others, we shall now state briefly our own ideas as to the proper treatment of the disease. If any thing gives a chance of cutting short a typhoid fever, we believe it to be the sudden shock produced upon the nervous system by the operation of an emetic; and accordingly, our first step usually is, the administration of a medicine of this nature. When the | patient is much excited, and no irritation of the bowels present, we prefer the tartarized antimony: when there is much feebleness, we usually employ ipecacuan; and this drug often operates advan- tageously upon children, by freeing their bowels, after its emetic action has been accomplished. With respect to actual aperients, we think they are often required and beneficial,—the discharges being’ depraved in character, and frequently destitute of bilious matter. They should, however, be of a mild kind, as the manna mixture (No. 26, p. 165 ;) or,if we desire to give a mercurial, the compound rhubarb powder (No. 29, p. 170.) If the affection of the throat be very distressing, occasioning much difficulty in respiration, before the appearance of sloughs, we may think it advisable to put leeches to the neck, or behind the ears; and if intense head-ache and stupor exist at the very commencement, the adoption of a similar measure may be justifiable, upon the grounds of local congestion being pre- * For such practitioners, we know no better advice than that of the judicious Huxham,—‘‘ at least to peruse the sixth commandment.”