The pulse / by W.H. Broadbent ; illustrated with 59 ophygmographic tracings.

  • Broadbent, W. H. (William Henry), Sir, 1835-1907.
Date:
[1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pulse / by W.H. Broadbent ; illustrated with 59 ophygmographic tracings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    103/328 (page 91)
    One of the painful effects sometimes met with is destructive inflammation of the eye from exposure, the lids not being able to meet and cover it. Con- junctivitis and ulceration of the cornea from this cause are often troublesome. The treatment required consists of rest, which is of the first importance, so that in bad cases the patient should be kept in the recumbent posture for the greater part of the day ; good food, iron, and arsenic, aloetic and tonic aperients, and other means which may be required for the improvement of the general health. The special remedies suggested by the cir- culatory and other characteristic symptoms are digitalis, strophanthus, caffeine, and medicines belong- ing to the same class. These are, perhaps, the most generally useful, and sometimes seem to have an immediate palliative effect. Sedation of the heart and pulse by aconite has been tried, but this drug is dangerously depressing. A line of treatment which has sometimes been attended with marked success is the administration of belladonna or atropine in gradually increasing and ultimately very large doses. Galvanisation of the sympathetic in the neck has been suggested, and has been re])orted to do good. For the most part, however, it is time and the gradual re-establishment of the general health and nervous tone by rest, food and tonics, and the removal of functional derangements, gastro-intestinal and uterine, which-^effect a cure. Aortic piilssitioi].—Cases are met with, so far as is known to me, only among women, and usually at or after middle life, in which, with remarkable rapidity and violence of the heart's action^ and, of course, a corresponding frequency of the pulse, there is an extraordinary vehemence in the pulsation of the abdominal aorta. The beating is a source of constant discomfort, sometimes of actual pain, to the