YANDELL on Spasmodic Cholera.



most grateful remedy to the patient, and in my experience,
always harmless, if not beneficial. In several instances I
was induced by the vomiting, and the profuse evacuations from
the bowels,to employ laudanum, but I rarely, if ever derived
from it any unequivocal advantage. Where administered as
an enema it perhaps retarded the diarrhmea-. In this mode I
should prefer to use it. And thus employed, I am bound to
believe it was useful in the hands of some other physicians.
Nor can I doubt that opium in its different forms, given in
conjunction with calomel, constituted a good remedy in the
practice of the city. One lady at least recovered from a
very severe attack by means of it alone, and many persons
took it for diarrhoea with the effect of checking it, and were
troubled no farther. It should be added however, that a
number who pursued this course only postponed the more
formidable symptoms, which ultimately came on with increas-
ed violence; and hence I should deprecate such a mode of
meeting the incipient stage of the disease. It may succeed
occasionally, but is oftener attended with disastrous conse-
quences. In combination with calomel, or the blue pill, opi-
um may be serviceable, and perhaps is deserving of higher
confidence than is generally reposed in it. My experience
inclines me to believe, that the vegetable astringents, of
which a tincture, or infusion of galls is one of the best,
would also be useful in certain cases, in checking the wa-
tery discharges. I certainly saw this article, in conjunction
with brandy, moderate the diarrhoea in one case in my neigh-
borhood.
  3d Stage. In treating the third stage of the disease, I employ-
ed no new remedies, and experienced the same failure in the
use of the old, that has been acknowledged by the profession in
other places. A patient laboring under collapse from chole-
ra, presents one of the most hopeless cases of disease. With
pulseless wrists, skin as cold as marble, cold tongue and
breath, shrivelled hands, and livid, contracted features,-with
only respiration continuing to show that life is not extinct,
our remedies are almost as inert. as if poured into a body-



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