Later
still, a number of noted French physicians, among them Briquet, Andral,
Monerat, and Legroux, renewed the use of this medicine in the form of
quinia, but gave it in smaller doses, seeking only its tonic effect,
from five to fifteen grains being administered in the course of
twenty-four hours, and then it was still continued in smaller doses.
Still more recently, quinia taking the place of Peruvian bark, the old
plan of administering large doses has been resumed. From thirty all the
way up to one hundred grains have been administered in the course of
twenty-four hours. Never was there a more profligate waste of a precious
medicine. Even the physicians who so used it were obliged to acknowledge
that it only did good in sub-acute and mild cases. I believe that it has
also been fashionable in the so called cases of hyperpyrexia to immerse
the patient in a bath varying in temperature from 60 deg. to 98 deg. Fahr.
Although patients thus treated sometimes recovered, they also sometimes
perished from congestion of the lungs and brain.
Among cardiac and nervous sedatives, digitalis, veratrum album and
viride, veratria and aconite, have each, at one time or other, been
employed indiscriminately. Such treatment, of course, has only proven
itself to be a monument of rashness to those who employed it.
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