The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal Volume 7 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 edition. Excerpt: ... to resort to it, the third and the fourth day." Lastly, M. Belot, at Havana, convinced of the urgent necessity of attacking the yellow fever as soon as it declares itself, and knowing that it frequently occurs that from motives of a barbarous economy, they do not send to the hospitals the commeicial marines, until all hope of a spontaneous cure is at an end: that is, when their disease has already existed many days, obtained from most of the captains an agreement of a stipulated amount of money, for all the men of an equipage, so that it was to their interest to begin the treatment as soon as they were assailed by the fever. This measure explains the advantageous propositions obtained by this physician, and which I shall exhibit in the course of this work. It is proven that bleeding is only indicated at the commencement of the yellow fever; that is to say, at the period in which an intense reaction of the circulation is manifest, as an immediate consequence of this fact, necessity requires that the therapeutic means should only be employed in those cases where this condition exists: and about it, many other conditions should also be grouped, for which we must draw the most exact calculations: such as the age, the constitution, and the moral state of the patient. We conceive, indeed, that so far from being advantageous, bleeding is rather hazardous, when from the first onset, the ensemble of symptoms indicates a general oppression of forces, or rather when, either by the progress of age. or by reason of a temperament essentially lymphatic, or by virtue of debility superinduced by anterior diseases; or. finally under the influence of a profound terror, which chains all the organic functions of the circulating system, no longer possesses the...