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Asiatic cholera: its symptoms, pathology and treatment
Asiatic cholera its symptoms pathology and treatment Author:Richard Barwell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. PREMONITORY, OR CHOLERAIC DIARRHOEA. In the tables given in the preceding chapter, and in all statistic records of the disease, in various countr... more »ies, and of different epidemics, it will be observed that the outbreak is always preceded by diarrhoea, which goes on increasing, not only in the number attacked, but also in the violence of the cases ; nay, as the epidemic draws nearer and nearer, certain isolated cases occur, which assume more and more a choleroid character, and which are returned, according to the view taken by the medical attendant, either as cholera or as diarrhoea, so that it was, in 1848, and will be again at any future time, extremely difficult, if at all possible, to fix and determine the exact date and time, when the first case occurs in any large town. But, what is perhaps more remarkable, it is extremely difficult or impossible to fix a period, when Asiatic cholera first began in any oneindividual, be he ever so carefully watched. Developed cholera and simple diarrhoea are two as distinct diseases, as can be well imagined, and yet do they so run into one another that it is impossible to give any one symptom, which could truly serve as the mark of distinction between the two; where the attendant could say, here did diarrhoea cease, and here cholera began. In bad cases of diarrhoea, as every practical man knows, there are not unfrequently cramps and coldness of the extremities; after many stools the motions begin to be less coloured with bile, and there is a considerable sinking of the pulse : therefore do these symptoms scarcely warrant us in calling such a case cholera. On the other hand, cases of cholera have come under my observation, in which the evacuations never quite lost the bilious tinge, and some have occurred, where there is neithe...« less