2. It revived and strengthened the patient. This was evident in many cases, in the facility with which patients who had staggered to a close-stool, walked back again to their beds after a copious evacuation. Dr. Sydenham takes notice of a similar increase of strength after a plentiful sweat in the plague. They both acted by abstracting excess of stimulus, and thereby removing the depression of the system.
3. It abated the paroxysm of the fever. Hence arose the advantage of giving a purge in some cases in the evening, when an attack of the fever was expected in the course of the night.
4. It frequently produced sweats when given on the first or second day of the fever, after the most powerful sudorifics had been taken to no purpose.
5. It sometimes checked that vomiting which occurs in the beginning of the disease, and it always assisted in preventing the more alarming occurrence of that symptom about the 4th or 5th day.
6. It removed obstructions in the lymphatic system. I ascribe it wholly to the action of mercury, that in no instance did any of the glandular swellings, which I formerly mentioned, terminate in a suppuration.
7. By discharging the bile through the bowels as soon and as fast as it was secreted, it prevented, in most cases, a yellowness of the skin.
However salutary the mercurial purge was, objections were made to it by many of our physicians; and prejudices, equally weak and ill-founded, were excited against it. I shall enumerate, and answer those objections.
1. It was said to be of too drastic a nature. It was compared to arsenic; and it was called a dose for a horse. This objection was without foundation. Hundreds who took it declared they had never taken so mild a purge. I met with but one case in which it produced bloody stools; but I saw the same effect from a dose of salts. It sometimes, it is true, operated from twenty to thirty times in the course of twenty-four hours; but I heard of an equal number of stools in two cases from salts and cremor tartar. It is not an easy thing to affect life, or even subsequent health, by copious or frequent purging. Dr. Kirkland mentions a remarkable case of a gentleman who was cured of a rheumatism by a purge, which gave him between 40 and 50 stools. This patient had been previously affected by his disease 16 or 18 weeks[67]. Dr. Mosely not only proves the safety, but establishes the efficacy of numerous and copious stools in the yellow fever. Dr. Say probably owes his life to three and twenty stools procured by a dose of calomel and gamboge, taken by my advice. Dr. Redman was purged until he fainted, by a dose of the same medicine. This venerable gentleman, in whom 70 years had not abated the ardour of humanity, nor produced obstinacy of opinion, came forward from his retirement, and boldly adopted the remedies of purging and bleeding, with success in several families, before he was attacked by the disease. His recovery was as rapid, as the medicine he had used was active in its operation. Besides taking the above purge, he lost twenty ounces of blood by two bleedings[68].