Such
sedatives may reduce the pulse, but do not shorten the disease. Indeed,
if it is possible to prove the absurdity of anything more clearly by
mere enumeration of these medicines as cures for rheumatism, I do not
know of it. Do digitalis and aconite act in the same manner? This is
just one expression of the folly which surrounded the use of digitalis
at the time of its discovery. Then every affection of the heart was
treated with digitalis.
Within the last few years new remedies have been proclaimed in the shape
of salicylic acid and its sodium salt. I confess that I possess no
personal knowledge of their use in this disease, for I was at first
dissuaded from employing them by a prejudice against the grounds on
which they were recommended, and more recently by the contradictory
judgments respecting them, and the unquestionable mischief they have
sometimes caused. According to their eulogists, the arrest of the
disease is secured by them within four or five days, whether the attack
be febrile or not; its mortality was diminished; relapses do not occur
if the medicine is continued until full convalescence; it is without
influence on the heart complications already existing, but it tends
to prevent them as well as other serious inflammations. One of these
gentlemen assures us that to say it far excels any other method of
treatment would be to give it but scant praise.
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