Southern Argus

CHRONIC BRONCHITIS.

We conceive the annexed remarks of Dr. Cooper, of sufficient weight to recommend them to the consideration of those who labor under this direful disease. They are taken from the N. Y. Com. Adv.—Ed. W. Mess.

The late lamented death of Dr. Rushe, from that form of consumption known as chronic bronchitis, painfully reminds me of a duty the subscriber owes to his profession and to society, of making known a simple form of treatment that has never failed him in curing this form of consumption, so destructive to the clerical and literary profession; this treatment is of nearly equal efficacy in catarrhal phthisis. and is a valuable remedy for consumption in all its forms, when in its chronic stages, and free from any inflammatory symptoms. This treatment is based on the pathology of consumption, as the generic name for disease.

Under the name of consumption are included the variety of diseases of the lungs attended with expectoration·of purulent matter from the breathing surface of the lungs, connected with emaciation, hectic fever, and its concomitants. night sweats colliquative diarrhœa, &c. All the forms of consumption act on the general health from one common cause—the presence of matter acting upon absorbing surfaces, and thus producing those symptoms known as hectic fever. It is the presence and violence of this symptom of consumption, that prostrates the patient, until it more or less slowly ends in death. It is the consequence of this hectic fever, and not the immediate disease of the lungs causing it, that forms the source of fatality from consumption.

The treatment I now with reluctant diffidence submit, I have successfully used for more than twelve years, and during that period of medical practice, I am not aware of having lost more than two or five patients from all the various forms of consumption, and these were mostly passed to that stage of disease where the structure of the lungs had become so extensively diseased as to preclude the use of more than palliative treatment. Cases of chronic bronchitis were in every instance cured by it. even when the purulent expectoration amounted to pints daily, with hectic fever, diarrhœa, cold sweats, and entire physical prostration.

The treatment is the administration of sulphate of copper in nauseating doses combined with ammonia, given so as to nauseate but not ordinarily to produce full vomiting; the usual dose for this purpose is about half a grain and five grains of the respective ingredients, in a tea-spoonfull of water, to be taken at first twice, and in the convalescent stages once a day.

In cases of chronic bronchitis a gargle of the sulphate of copper alone is superadded. In this latter form of consumption, this treatment almost invariably suspends the hectic symptoms in a few days, and the disease rapidly advances to its final cure.

In cases of the more proper forms of consumption, the treatment must be intermitted frequently and again returned to; and whenever soreness of the chest, or other symptoms of inflammatory action exists, the treatment should be suspended; as it is in the chronic state alone that the remedy is indicated or useful—that state in which the condition of the general system as sympathetically involved becomes the more prominent symptom, and the success of the treatment depends chiefly on the breaking up this sympathetic action of the diseased lung, on the more healthy tone of the stomach, and increasing its digestive powers, and likewise causing, during nauseating action, a more active and healthy circulation of blood through the lungs. Its curative powers are more immediately attributable to these effects of its action.—But theory apart, the treatment is based on more than ten years experience of its curative advantages, in the proper treatment of mucopurulent and purulent expectoration.

Having left a profession that more nearly than any other approaches the pure duties of humanity, but which has nearly ceased in this country to be honorable or profitable have little motive in exposing myself to that certain ridicule that follows the annunciation that consumption may be cured, but the assurance of practical experience, and the desire of making public a means of saving life, in one of its most frequent and unwelcome exits.

EDW. C. COOPER, M. D.