YANDELL on Spasmodic Cholera.



  In laying down the treatment which I pursued, and should
recommend in cholera, 1 am aware that I shall differ from
many of the profession. Where plans have been so various,
and often so contradictory, it is impossible to give satisfaction
to the advocates of all. In no country, perhaps, have the
extremes into which practitioners have run, been greater
than in our own, and each party, as is natural, has the most
unbounded confidence in its own method. By some, the salt
emetic is recommended as almost infallible in the disease,
while others proscribe emetics altogether, as unsafe if not
injurious, and at the same time, indicate some other system
which they have found unfailing. Thus, it is not difficult
to find numerous infallible cures for cholera, announced in
the journals of the west, while the disease has been marked
in its progress by a frightful mortality. For myself, having
witnessed most of these plans, I am obliged to confess that
I have seen them all fail. That they have been attended
with better success in other places, I cannot for a moment
doubt, and this only confirms the truth of what has been of-
ten remarked of cholera, that it is an ever-varying disease,
in point of violence, sweeping over some places with
the fury of a tornado, while it passes over others with the
gentleness of a summer breeze. It is only in this way that
I can understand the various results of the same remedy in
different places. And it has at least impressed upon me this
useful lesson-to be slow in condemning a practice which I
have not tried, or which has not succeeded in my hands-a
lesson which the history of medicine ought long since to
have taught practitioners.
  Cholera may be divided into three stages, with refer-
ence to the treatment. Thefirstis the stage of fmcal diarrhiea;
2nd, that in which rice water discharges and cramps are the
prominent symptoms; and 3d, the stage of collapse. In
those cases where the disease does not progress with extraor-
dinary vehemence, these stages arepretty clearly marked:
but in its most malignant form, the patient is precipitated.
almost from the commencement, into the last fatal stage.



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