Samuel Elder - Lecture Notes and Casebook

Early American Medical mss 6 small 4^to Journals bound together case book, recipes, [P?] [of?] medicine in 1810, lectures etc. Tells of medical facts relating to Geo. Washington's death.

Vault (mss) Elder, Samuel

The LIBRARY of DARTMOUTH-COLLEGE IN MEMORIAM EDWARD DAVID SANBORN 1832 LIBRARIAN-PROFESSOR OF BELLES- LETTRES SANBORN-LIBRARY-FUND ESTABLISHED BY EDWIN-WEBSTER-SANBORN-1878

We are indebted to M. Coster, a French Physician, for following valuable discovery as a preventive to hydrophobia : —Take two table-spoonfuls of fresh chloride of lime in powder, mix it with half a pint of water, and with this wash keep the wound constantly bathed, and frequently renewed. The chloride gas possesses the power of decomposing this tremendous poison, and renders mild and harmless that venom against whose resistless attack the artillery of medical science has been so long directed in vain. It is necessary to add that this wash should be applied as soon as possible after the infliction of the bite. Another plan, which has been extensively tried at Breslau and Zurich, and many other parts of the Continent, consists not merely in cutting out the bitten part, [mere incision has been found too often unavailing,] but in combining with the incision of the part effectual means for keeping open the wound and maintaining it in a constant state of suppuration during a period of at least six weeks. Other curative means, as the exhibition of mercury, bella-donna, or lyltoe, were also employed in these cases ; but upon these, it is thought, little reliance can be placed. The following are the results of this treatment:—From 1800 to 1824, the number of persons admitted into the Breslau hospital was 184, of whom two only died of hydrophobia : from 1783 to 1824 inclusive, there were admitted into the hospital at Zurich 233 persons bitten by different animals, [182 by dogs] of whom only four died,—two on the second day of admission, and in whom the diseases had probably become developed before they were submitted to the treatment, and the other two were bitten in parts [inside of the cheek an eyelid] where the prescribed means could not be employed with the requisite witness.— London paper.