Lectures on clinical medicine, delivered in the Hospital Saint-Jacques, of Paris / by P. Jousset ; translated, with copious notes and additions, by R. Ludlam.

Jousset, P. (Pierre), 1818-1910.

Date:: 1880

Credit: Lectures on clinical medicine, delivered in the Hospital Saint-Jacques, of Paris / by P. Jousset ; translated, with copious notes and additions, by R. Ludlam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$THE MEDICAL CLINIC. into t le bladder, wl.en they thouglit the lesion was in that I found the patient, on the 20th of February, in a truly deplomble condition. He was passing half a chamber-vessel tull of bright red arterial blood three times a day; his lips were the color of his cheeks, and his cheeks were the color of the sheets upon which he lay. His stomach was so sensitive and irritable as to be unable to retain even the simplest nour- ishment. After repeated trials it had been able to retain a sj^oonful of alkathrepta. His pulse was feeble and thready the heart beating 120 to 130 times per minute. He was nerv- ous and sleepless. What passed from the bladder seemed like pure blood, and, as I said before, half filled an ordinary cham- ber-vessel three times in a day. A microscopic examination showed nothing but red blood corpuscles. There was some pain in the region of the right kidney, and frequent spasmodic pains from that locality, along the course of the corresponding ureter to the bladder. These pains, to- gether with the elongated clots in the vessel, settled the ques- tion of the locality of the lesion, to my mind. I fully realized the gravity of the case before me, and diagnosed a severe, pro- tracted and aggravated case of hematuria, with the kidney as the seat of the lesion and the source of the vast quantities of blood discharged. The next problem which presented itself to my mind, and to me and to the patient the most important and vital question of all, was, what shall be the remedy which will most speedily, radically and effectually stop this terrible, and if not soon checked, necessarily fatal, waste of the vital fluid. On glancing mentally back over the provings and symptoms of phosphorms^ I found that it produces hemorrhages from the kidneys. I found that arsenicum^ carbonate of ammonia and ])hos2)horus are mentioned by even the old-school authorities {Ziemssen) as producing hemorrhage from the kidneys. This being the case, and phosphorus being so completely indicated constitutionally, and indeftendent of this particular occasion, there was no oth(?r proper or scientific course for me to pursue but to give tins j)atient phosphorus. This I consequently did.$