Southern Medical and Surgical Journal - Georgia Regents University

1859.] Lecture on Cerebral Ftthey are repeated every hour or every hall' hour, and the patientdies in a state of dem i-asphyxia, as in epilepsThe convulsions are a prominent symptom of the ihird periodof cerebral fever ; but in this stage another accident also takesplace. The patient fallen into a state of deep drowsiness, closesthe eye-lids but partially ; the eye being insensible, the cornearemains exposed to the air, the act of winking is no longer performed,the eye dries, the conjunctiva inflames, and then you observea deep suffusion of. the membrane at the same time that theedges of the lids become bleared. This is also seen in othergrave diseases, (typhoid fever, for example,) and it is an accidentto which I have often called attention, and which 1 made thesubject of a note published in the first volume of the ArchivesGenerates de Medecine for the year 1850.The termination of this disease is. as I have already said in thecourse of this lecture, always fatal, for the exceptions of this ruleare so rare, as not to be worth mentioning.After so sad a prognosis, I should have little to say upon thesubject of treatment, since whatever we do is in vain. Neverthelessyou have seen me resort to remedies in the case of thelittle child whose case we are considering. I instituted treatment,not with the expectation of rescuing it from its fate, but to affordsome consolation to the mother. Is it not in fact cruel to sayto a mother who calls you to her child, or if not to say it inwords to indicate by your actions, that medicine is powerless,and that her child is doomed to certain death ? Although,therefore, the physician, instructed by long experience, is unable tosee a glimmer of hope, he should act, he should undertake thecase, and apply all the means at his disposal to sustain thecourage of a family which implore him for aid, and not leavethem to the bitter regret that nothing was done to save theirchild.For a long time I have employed everything in the treatmentof this disease, everything extolled by others, everything which,upon my own part, I had been able to imagine. I have givencalomel in large doses, and I have given it in minute ones; Ihave had recourse to drastic purgatives and to sedatives ; I haveadministered the iodide of potassium as recommended by Otterburg; I have applied large blisters to the head, I have appliedice and cold affusions, and never, except in two cases, have Iseen the disease retrocede, and in those two cases I am confidentmy remedies had nothing to do with the result. Farther, at thechildren's hospital, I have treated the patients comparatively,some energetically and some upon the expectant plan, and I mustsay that the fatal event followed more rapidly in the former thanin the latter. Now, therefore. I feel obliged to pursue a courseof medication far from energetic, and designed, I repeat, rather