1014 COLD AND THE NARCOTIC POISONS. 



and other spasmodic diseases? Is it not more in 

 accordance with reason and common sense to 

 follow the maxim of Hippocrates, that diseases 

 are to be treated by remedies of an opposite 

 nature from that of the causes which produce 

 them? (Contraria medentur contrariis). Or is 

 it more philosophical to follow the homoeopathic 

 doctrine, that Similia curantur similibus ? 



2. But convulsions are also produced by the 

 sudden abstraction of animal heat from the body, 

 without any loss of blood, or when its temperature 

 is reduced several degrees beloiv the natural standard, 

 as sheivn by the cramps induced by the exertion of 

 swimming in cold water. Yet the cold bath has 

 been frequently employed as a remedy for teta- 

 nus. As might naturally be supposed, it has, in 

 several cases, proved almost instantly fatal. 



3. It is well known that all the more active nar- 

 cotic and other poisons, when taken into the stomach, 

 or absorbed into the circulation, produce convulsions 

 and death. Yet we are informed by Samuel 

 Cooper, in his First Lines of Surgery, that solu- 



a case of tetanus, related by Dr. Phillips, brought on a young lady 

 of delicate constitution by exhaustion from dancing and subsequent 

 exposure to a cold atmosphere. In the first place, he had her put 

 into the warm bath for fifteen minutes, when she became so much 

 relieved that she begged not to be removed from it, and was allowed 

 to remain fifteen minutes longer. In the mean time he bled her, 

 when she seemed greatly exhausted, and the spasms returned, 

 with faintness and vomiting. Yet he prescribed calomel and 

 scamony, epsom salts and senna. 



