Puerperal Anasarca
§ 36. This disease admits of an easy and certain cure by the Digitalis.
§ 37. This species of dropsy may originate from other causes than child birth. In the beginning of last March, a gentleman at Wolverhampton desired my advice for very large and painful swelled legs and thighs. He was a temperate man, not of a dropsical habit, had great pain in his groins, and attributed his complaints to a fall from his horse. He had taken diuretics, and the strongest drastic purgatives with very little benefit. Considering the anasarca as caused by the diseased inguinal glands, I ordered common poultice and mercurial ointment to the groins, three grains of pulv. fol. Digitalis night and morning, and a cooling diuretic decoction in the day-time. He soon lost his pain, and the swellings gradually subsided.
The End
Footnotes
12 See an original and valuable treatise by Dr. Fowler, entitled, Medical Reports of the Effects of Tobacco.
13 Many years ago I communicated to my friend, Dr. Percival, an account of some trials of breathing fixed air in consumptive cases. The results were published by him in the second Vol. of his very useful Essays Medical and Experimental, and have since been copied into other publications. I take this opportunity of acknowledging that I suspect myself to have been mistaken in the nature of the disease there mentioned to have been cured. I believe it was a case of Vomica, and not a true Phthisis that was cured. The Vomica is almost always curable. The fixed air corrects the smell of the matter, and very shortly removes the hectic fever. My patients not only inspire it, but I keep large jars of the effervescing mixture constantly at work in their chambers.