In the Police Hospital of Calcutta, the late Dr. Bain has used the remedy in three cases of traumatic tetanus, of these one has died and two recovered.
A very remarkable case has recently occurred in the practice of my cousin, Mr. Richard O’Shaughnessy. The patient was a Jew, aged thirty, attacked with tetanus during the progress of a sloughing sore of the scrotum, the sequel of a neglected hydrocele. Three grain doses were used every second hour with the effect of inducing intoxication and suspending the symptoms. The patient has recovered perfectly, and now enjoys excellent health.
Beside the preceding cases I have heard of two of puerperal trismus treated in native females. Both terminated fatally, an event which cannot discredit the remedy, when it is remembered that the Hindoo native females of all ranks are placed, during and subsequent to their confinement, in a cell, within which large logs of wood are kept constantly ignited. The temperature of these dens I have found to exceed 120° of Fahrenheit’s scale.
A curious coincidental proof of the value of hemp in these cases has very recently come to my notice. In the appendix to Sir James Murray’s “Medical Essays,” p. 16, dated Dublin 1837, occurs the following passage:—“Having written the substance of these pages (Sir James’s work) to my brother, then assistant-surgeon of the 60th Rifles, at the Cape of Good Hope, he mentioned that a plant called dyka, or wild hemp, which grows on the eastern coast of Africa, is used by the natives for this purpose (the relief of puerperal convulsions), and that they all, male and female, smoke it to bring on perfect relaxation and relief from pain and spasm of any kind during its relaxing influence.”
The preceding facts are offered to the professional reader with unfeigned diffidence as to the inferences I feel disposed to derive from their consideration. To me they seem unequivocally to show that when given boldly and in large doses the resin of hemp is capable of arresting effectually the progress of this formidable disease, and in a large proportion of cases of effecting a perfect cure.
The facts are such at least as justify the hope that the virtues of the drug may be widely and severely tested in the multitudes of these appalling cases which present themselves in all Indian hospitals.
Messrs. Hughes and Templar, eminent veterinary surgeons of Calcutta, have used the hemp resin in five cases of horses suffering from tetanus; of these three have recovered. Dr. Sawyers, of the medical board, has cured a pony similarly affected.
Drs. Esdaile and Macrae have used the hemp with success; the former in a case of tetanus; the latter in one of convulsions from neuralgia of the testis, which had resisted every other remedy, and for which the removal of the organ had been decided on. In the “London Medical Gazette” Mr. Lewis gives a case of tetanus in which the hemp was used with great relief to the symptoms, although it did not effect a cure.
Case of Infantile Convulsions.
A very interesting case of this disease has recently occurred in my private practice, the particulars of which I have the permission of the family to insert in this paper.