℞ Spirit. Minderer. ℥ ss. acet. scillit. ȝ i. syr. papav. alb. ȝ vi. misce; cap. hor. somni.
Jan. 11th. The cough easier last night; difficulty of breathing less; pulse 108 in a minute. Ordered the anodyne draught to be repeated, and the use of the julep, with acet. scillit. to be continued.
Jan. 12th. Pulse slower; cough and pain of the side easier; but still complains of a head-ach.
Jan. 13th. Pulse 94 in a minute; cough continues easier in the night, but is troublesome in the day-time.
Jan. 14th. Every way better; pulse only 80 in a minute. As her cough is still bound, ordered her, besides the medicines above-mentioned, a pectoral decoction of rad. alth. &c.
Jan. 15th. Cough and other complaints in a great measure removed; pulse 65 in a minute.
From this time her cough gave her little trouble; but on the 18th she complained of a pain in the epigastrium, with sickness at stomach, want of apetite, and a giddiness in her head, which were considerably relieved by a vomit, infusum amarum, and stomachic purges; and were almost wholly cured by the return of her menses on the 5th of February, after an interval of eight weeks.
V. A girl 21 months old, who had (December 1756) a great load of the small-pox, and not of a good kind, with a cough and obstructed breathing, was, on the seventh day from the eruption, blistered on the back; by which the pulse was lessened from 200 to 156 strokes in a minute. Next day her legs were also blistered, and the pulse thereby fell to 136. But the child’s lungs being much oppressed, and her throat being so full of pustules that she could scarce swallow any thing, she died towards the end of the ninth day.
I could add several other cases of the remarkable effects of blisters in lessening the quickness of the pulse in coughs attended with fever, pain in the side, and pituitous infarction of the lungs: but those above may be sufficient to put this matter out of doubt, as well as to remove any prejudice, that may still remain against the free use of so efficacious a remedy.
In a true peripneumony, especially where the inflammation is great, repeated bleeding is the principal remedy, and blisters early applied are not so proper. But when the peripneumony is of a mixed kind; when the lungs are not so much inflamed as loaded with a pituitous matter; when bleeding gives but little relief; when the pulse, tho’ quick, is small; when the patient is little able to bear evacuations, and the disease has continued for a considerable time; in all these cases blistering will produce remarkable good effects, and, far from increasing, will generally lessen the frequency of the pulse, and fever, more speedily than any other remedy.