Both Mr Rice and Mr Price were in the habit of washing their patients with vinegar and sponging them with it, as strong as it could be procured, or with lime-juice. They dipped rags in the acids, and kept them constantly applied to the buboes. The head and stomach were relieved by wet cloths being kept to the scrotum.
The third indication was, to obviate the debility which appeared always to be very great. With this view, bark, wine, and opium, were very largely given; and, at a certain stage, the cold bath.
At first, calomel was used only as a purgative, but, at last, the use of this remedy was carried farther. The reports were, “that, upon the mouth becoming sore, the skin became softer, the pulse more regular, the eye more clear, the tongue more moist, and that the thirst with the affection of the head and of the abdomen entirely disappeared. The evacuations too were copious, and approached more nearly to their natural colour.” Mr Price writes, “So much am I persuaded, that in the modes of oxygenation, I am in possession of an infallible remedy, that now I purposely expose myself.” Where he succeeded in affecting the gums, Mr Thomas lost none of his patients, and Mr Price in a late letter says, “Calomel affected the gums of all my patients who survived.” It was a general remark, that the gums were remarkably obstinate and insensible to the effects of mercury in this disease. Mr Grisdale writes, “in two of the cases, I for five days pushed calomel and mercurial ointment to a very great length, but never could succeed in affecting the gums.” Both these patients, in a subsequent letter, he reports to have died. Here a particular fact deserves to be noticed: one of the medical gentlemen, who went on duty into the pest-house, and escaped the disease, on account of an old venereal complaint, used mercury and nitric acid very freely during the two months of his tour of duty, and he was one of the six who escaped the infection. On the whole, in mercury and the nitric acid, we appear to have excellent remedies for the plague: but they must be very early and very liberally exhibited. If the first stage is allowed to pass over before they are given, the season of doing it with advantage is in danger of being lost. When the stomach becomes irritable, I suspect that they never can be given with propriety. Perhaps, of all the cases which occurred in the army, this treatment never got a fair chance of success, excepting in those which occurred on the first breaking out of the disease in the hospital of the 88th regiment, in Mr Thomas’s case, and in that of Corporal Francis.
I regret, that, in this disease, we did not give a full and more fair trial to cold bathing. The extraordinary circumstance of the escape of the Lascar from the Rosetta pest-house, and the great benefit which I have seen from it in the yellow-fever, to which the plague bears no slight resemblance, would induce me to give it a full trial in plague.
I have, I believe, recounted the principal part of the treatment, and that which was most generally agreed upon. Other modes received a trial; but, from an experience of their inefficacy they were all deserted.
Dr Whyte used the lancet very freely, but every one of his patients died; Dr Buchan was in the habit occasionally of having recourse to it; and, in the first season, he said, that he had met with several cases where bleeding was of the greatest service. In the beginning of the season, Mr Price bled one patient. The blood appeared very dark, and dissolved: this patient died, and Mr Price never repeated the operation on any other.
Some gentlemen, attached to the Brunonian system, put the stimulating plan to the test. By Messieurs Adrian and Whyte, patients were for some time kept under the influence of wine and opium; but, this practice was never successful and they deserted it. It was at length the practice of Mr Adrian to unite stimulants and mercurials.
Seldom before, I believe, have the bodies of those who died of this disease been dissected. The first was a Sepoy, by Mr Price alone; the second by Messieurs Price and Rice; and, in the last subject, viz. Signior Posetti, the Italian merchant, so severely affected were both of these gentlemen, that it put a stop to this mode of investigation. The general appearances seen on the subjects, were, a perfectly-diseased state of the glandular system. In the liver, no matter was found; but, it was much enlarged and greatly diseased. Signior Posetti had only one bubo; the femoral gland was sixteen times the natural size and weight; and the blood, from the femoral artery, flowed black, pitchy, and dissolved in its texture. I come now to the last, and most pleasing part of the subject, the means of
The prevention. If, in the treatment of the disease, we were not successful, we assuredly were completely so in the prevention. At length, this became so generally known, that we no longer heard the distressing accounts of despondence and despair among the natives. They now no longer entertained such a dread of the pest-houses. We at length even found volunteers from the natives for duty in the pest-houses.