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A Practical Compendium of the Diseases of the Skin
A Practical Compendium of the Diseases of the Skin Author:Jonathan Green 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: The use of the sulphur fume bath in such a disease as erysipelas may appear bold practice; I am satisfied both of its efficacy and perfect safety. The first case... more » of the kind, indeed, which I saw treated in this way, caused me some alarm for the patient's safety, but also made a powerful impression on my mind. It was that of a gentleman about forty years of age, labouring under an attack of erysipelas of the head and face, of the most violent description: both eyes were buried in the head, and every part was so much swollen, as almost to obliterate all resemblance to the human countenance ; the patient seemed farther to be in a half stupified or comatose state. I learned that he was subject, once or twice a year, to attacks of this kind, mostly from exposure to damp cold, occasionally from errors of diet, but sometimes also from no evident or imaginable cause. I saw this gentleman, in the state I have described, placed in a sulphur fumigating apparatus by the foreign physician, whose patient he was, and, I confess, not without some anxiety for his safety; but the result soon dissipated tny fears, for the general perspiration had set in but a few minutes, when the swelling of the face seemed to subside, and the features to acquire something more of relief. Next day the patient would have been readily recognised by his friends, and his articulation, from being perfectly unintelligible, had become distinct. The baths were continued every day ; on the fourth day afterwards, I met the patient in the street, walking as if he had had nothing the matter with him. During the last twelve years, cases of this kind have been familiar to me, and now that I reflect on the power which the hot air and sulphur fume bath possess in restoring at once the proper functions of the skin, I no longe...« less