She took at first dilute acids with tinct. rhei co. and improved, but relapsed at the end of June, and it was then that I recommended the gas to her; the prominent symptoms being headache, depression, complete loss of appetite, and a constriction about the chest “as if she could not get air enough:” menorrhagia had been going on for two days.
June 23d.—Inhalation of 4 pints in 60: there was not any marked effect.
25th.—6 pints in 60, and before the inhalation was over the headache was relieved, and all that day she felt “lighter” and better, though rather strange; to bed early, and slept and woke without headache, the first time for nearly twelve months, and was nearly free from her shoulder pain.
27th.—Dose repeated with similar good results, and no medicine taken; the diet was regulated as it had been before. To be brief, she took eight inhalations on alternate days, and at the end of that time was well enough to do without treatment: not that she was quite well, but restored to her ordinary health, and the improvement has up to this time continued.
Case IX.—A lady of 21, after a period of great mental anxiety and of close application to business, began to feel extreme depression, drowsiness, anorexia, headache, nausea, and interscapular pain; the pulse was slow, the face pale; there were palpitation and dyspnœa without signs of organic disease. The symptoms had lasted about two months, when I first saw her in July 1868. She took alkalies, aperients, and appropriate medicines, and on the 12th took inhalation, 7 pints in 60. Here again the same remarkable effect was produced, in relieving headache before the end of the quantity. She continued to inhale a little larger dose every third day for a fortnight, without taking any medicine for the latter part of the time. She has remained fairly well ever since, and voluntarily expressed the great benefit which she derived from the gas, especially as to relieving a sense of constriction across the chest and dyspnœa.
Both these cases were tolerably acute, and occurred in persons of naturally “sanguine” temperament, but it is necessary to record that another case which I have treated more recently,—a young lady of “bilious” temperament, who suffered from hepatic congestion in a more chronic form,—found no special effect whatever from inhalations taken on alternate days, for a fortnight.
Case X. was one of albuminuria in a lady of 57. The disease had commenced four years before, and her health had been markedly impaired for the last twelve months (dating from an attack of vertigo, and loss of consciousness). Last winter she had had bronchitis. She was a lady highly connected, and had been under the care of several eminent London physicians, who had concurred in advising her to go into the country for a time, and I was sent for to see her in November last, when she had already been at a country-house in this neighbourhood for some months.
She was feeble, with pallid face and injected cheeks; extremities œdematous; dyspnœa to a great extent on the slightest exertion; tendency to fainting and giddiness; urine deposited urates, and gave a cloud of albumen with the usual tests. Almost the only remedy which had not been given to her was this gas. I requested her to write and ask her physician if he concurred in its use; he wrote back to say “by all means,” and on November 18 she began with 14 pints in 60 of air. The pulse was 78 at commencing, and did not vary. She took it six times at intervals of three days. I had anticipated good from it, but there was really no marked effect. She thought, in fact, that her headache was rather worse afterwards, but I think that was better accounted for by the carriage drive to my house and the extra excitement.
Treatment was omitted for a time, and in the interval she got an attack of subacute bronchitis; on recovery she hired an apparatus of her own, and began, on December 12, 16 pints to 60. I consider that she had a week’s fair trial, but at the end of that time, what with leakage in the machine and non-arrival of gas, the lady’s patience failed, and the treatment was not persevered with. I mention these matters as an instance of one of the difficulties that an unusual mode of treatment must necessarily contend with. However, the result of this treatment, such as it was, gave no encouragement to persevere.
Case XI. resembled the last in the fact of there being organic disease. She was a delicate and refined lady, of the age of 34, unmarried. With a history of some years of spinal debility, and of congestive headache, at this time (September 1868) there was general prostration, numbness, and tingling in various parts, a sense of suffocation and of constriction, and partial loss of power over limbs; but worse than all, the attacks of headache of frightful intensity, attended with throbbing, flushing, and confusion of thought, and generally located over the left eye, which then protruded very much. Of these and other symptoms, some were explicable on the hypothesis of congestion of the spinal cord, and parts of the cerebrum, while some suggested a grave suspicion of ramollissement; others, again, of a chronic thickening of the membranes. My opinion was necessarily doubtful, but with regard to remedies oxygen offered a prospect of relieving at least some of these symptoms; it is said to have done so in recorded cases. Moreover, the patient had had the best obtainable advice in her own town of Wolverhampton and in the city of Cork, remedies prescribed by her physician had not benefited her, and for some months she had been under homoeopathic treatment at home and at Malvern. I recommended her to hire an apparatus for her own use; and on October 4 she began with 12 pints to 50 of air, the inhalation to be extended over the period of one hour. The necessary exertion tired her, and she felt no appreciable relief. I did not like to wait longer without attempting to relieve by some of our usual remedies, and I prescribed gr. viij pot. brom. with ♏︎viij. liq. ergotæ, as having a special influence in equalizing the spinal circulation.