A few Remarks on the diseases of Seamen. 259 



very useful adjuvant in the milder forms of the disease which 

 prevail in some parts of Europe. 



But to return to the sugar of lead treatment, it is unneces- 

 sary to enquire here, what shares the opium and the lead 

 relatively bear in the curative process ; but that the sugar of 

 lead plays an important part we have no doubt, and we have 

 employed it combined with hyoscyamus very advantageously 

 in some chronic cases. This mode of treatment has been 

 tried very extensively among natives, and appeared to be very 

 efficacious, and convenient, as avoiding the chance of saliva- 

 tion. It would seem to be particularly adapted to that insidious 

 form of hemorrhagic dysentery, of which several cases have 

 of late occurred in middle aged men, characterised by the 

 pouring out of immense quantities of blood from the mucous 

 surfaces, indeed compared by some to flooding in child-birth, 

 but of which no well marked case has occurred in the Howrah 

 Seaman's Hospital.* 



We have written at this length about sugar of lead, not as 

 advocating any exclusive mode of treatment, or meaning to 

 assert its superiority over that most admirable remedy, sul- 

 phate of copper, or over various others ; but having lately met 

 with a paper, in which, owing to its alleged bad effects when 

 given in small quantity in a single case, its total disuse was 

 recommended, we thought it as well to record that we have 

 used it in large doses in some 300 cases both in Europeans 

 and in Natives, without any of those disagreeable constitutional 

 effects which are attributed to its employment. 



Of course after the dysenteric symptoms have begun to 

 subside, various alteratives are useful in aiding the bowels to 



* There is no distinct account of this form of dysentery in Raleigh's book: his 

 hemorrhagic form being quite different. Twining describes it, but does not seem to 

 regard it as the consequence of chronic disease. Several cases of it were related 

 to me by the late Dr. Garden, who has so recently been removed from us, when at 

 the height of professional eminence in Calcutta. Strong sense, high principle, 

 never-tiring, ever-zealous friendship, were some traits of a character, which was 

 most esteemed, where best known. 



