Читать книгу New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers - Various - Страница 15

Miss W., 42 years old, passed her childhood in the West Indies, and brought from there a peculiar skin disease. When I saw her for the first time her features looked old for her age, skin gray and sallow, hair gray, rough, full of dandruff, and moisture oozing from the ears and forehead. The scalp feels hard and thickened. The cervical glands are indurated all around the neck. On the left chest an herpetic eruption of the size of a dollar, and on the mamma a hard tumor of the size of a fist. For a year past this tumor began to be painful and sensitive to pressure, and my advice was sought for relief of all her ailments, especially as her hands were also in a fearful state, where the eruption looked as if she had the itch. The nails were discolored, knobby, easily bleeding and covered with a gluey eruption. She had to wear and to change gloves every day. For nine years she never entered society, as the exhalation from her body disgusted even herself, and was hardly bearable, though sponging the whole body and daily renewal of linen was strictly adhered to. In such an obstinate chronic psoric case treatment with small doses is at first necessary, and Arsen. brom., two drops twice daily, ordered, and her cold bath continued. After four weeks the dose was doubled, and after nine weeks the first glimmer of improvement could be seen. The tumor in the mamma was smaller and painless, and where before it was so sensitive as to be covered with oil-silk she could bear now the pressure of her clothing. After four months steady continuation of four drops twice daily, she was able to go without gloves. The scalp also was cleaner, less hard, and the ears more dry. But with the return of spring the eruption gained new vigor. The head and hands became covered with suppurating nodules and small exuding herpetic spots, which became confluent and itched terribly, a most classic picture of the herpes of the ancients. Though for years she had been accustomed to an aggravation in the spring, she never witnessed it in such severity. I now omitted the drug and ordered head and hands frequently washed with cold water. After eight days the storm calmed down, and it was remarkable to witness the steady decrease of the induration in the cervical glands and mamma. After four weeks the old treatment was renewed. During the summer months she took regularly her four drops twice daily, and in the beginning of autumn the dose was reduced to two drops, and so continued during the whole winter. The following spring crisis was the mildest one she ever experienced. During the summer she took her four drops, during fall and winter two drops. The third spring aggravation came with full severity, but lasted only three days, when desquamation followed. Another year of the same treatment and the fourth spring eruption showed itself slightly only in small papules behind the ears and between the fingers, and were hardly worth noticing. She now felt a slight weakness in right arm, which from childhood up was rather weaker than the other one. After the disappearance of the induration in the mamma the arm seemed to regain its former strength and the patient felt therefore rather astonished at the reappearance of the weakness when its cause seemed removed, but it yielded readily to a mild constant current applied a few times, and some faradic shocks each time from the shoulder through the arm, and in September she went to Nizza in order to use sea-bathing, with the advice to take for a whole year one drop daily of her solution. She considered herself now well, but still her skin was flabby, especially on the hands where the epidermis often desquamated, and the nails remained hard, brittle and without lustre.

I may here remark that I found repeatedly Arsenic in the urine of such patients. A case of obstinate intermittens larvata, characterized by vomiting of chyme, also yielded to Arsen. brom. One case more must suffice. A young man went to America but failed in his trade, and became barkeeper on a Mississippi steamer, which place he had to give up on account of intermittent fever. We find him then as hostler in Chicago where he was laid up with an attack of cholera, and as he did not fully recover his strength he returned to the old home again. When I saw him for the first time the diagnosis seemed to be first stage of Bright's disease. Anamnesis, ætiology, and present state, albumen in the urine, justified the diagnosis. Patient is pale, bloated, œdema pedum, no appetite, white tongue, thin feverish pulse, swollen spleen, watery diarrhœa alternating with constipation. Every drug produced vomiting, and he perfectly abhorred the old Quinine powders. I ordered four drops Arsen. brom. and a full meat diet. Improvement followed with the continuance of the treatment. After three weeks the spleen was reduced in size, his face showed better color, hardly any œdema. To strengthen the skin he was advised to take pineneedle baths, and after three months' treatment he could be discharged, a well man. He was advised to take for a few months one drop daily of his solution, and to take often an airing in the pineries which abound around Frankfort. Though he returned to America the latest reports from him are that he feels again as well as ever, but he keeps his drops about him.

Arsen. brom. is also a powerful remedy in diabetes mellitus and insipidus, for I cured cases with it where the patient had already been reduced from 138 pounds to 98, and where the urine could be condensed, by boiling, into syrupy consistency. Mixed diet may be allowed, though I insist upon large quantities of fresh meat during treatment with Bromide of arsenic. Let the patient take three drops thrice daily in a glass of water, and after a week the insatiable burning thirst will be quenched, and these doses must be continued till the quantity of sugar in the urine is reduced, when the drug might be taken twice a day and continued for a long time. A diabetic patient needs fresh pure air if he wishes to get well; confinement in a room or in the office prevents the action of any treatment, for it needs ozone to reduce the sugar of the blood into carbonic acid and water.