Hoivrah Hospital Report for 1846. 511 



tions. Diarrhoea, of some continuance, is often the first stage 

 of severe dysentery ending favourably. In the case of a lad 

 of 19, admitted in the inflammatory stage of dysentery of 

 several weeks previous duration, with the characteristic symp- 

 toms of great abdominal tenderness and tumefaction, with 

 distressing tormina and tenesmus, and the dejection of blood 

 and mucus and shreds of membrane, where death was occa- 

 sioned by the sudden attack of cholera, the following were 

 the post mortem appearances, of the intestines more par- 

 ticularly, and they were such as, notwithstanding the severity 

 of the symptoms during life, were quite compatible with re- 

 covery, had not cholera supervened, namely, colon, its mucous 

 membrane throughout of a somewhat livid colour, the epithe- 

 lium of the membrane detached in many places and hanging 

 loosely, the mucous membrane highly vascular and of a 

 purple colour in patches, in the midst of these patches were 

 small ulcers, apparently filling up by a process of granulation, 

 their surfaces of a purple colour. I have noticed in several 

 of the examinations of dysentery, a honey- combed ulcerated 

 state of the membrane at the extremity of the ilium, the 

 seat of the small aggregate glands. 



In October last a ship arrived in Calcutta from Sydney, 

 having taken in water at Copang, on the island of Timoor, 

 in the Straits, and from that date the crew and officers 

 became unhealthy, almost all of them suffered more or less 

 from dysentery. Upon arrival at Calcutta a number of the 

 men were sent into the Howrah Hospital ; several of them 

 had been passing blood for weeks, and the circulating blood 

 in several instances had become scorbutic, evinced by bleeding 

 gums, pallor of gums, and general sallowness of complexion, 

 and, in the after examination, by a softened condition of 

 the spleen : of these cases three died. 



In the management of dysentery, I depend upon early 

 bleeding, and the ipecacuanha and mercurial treatment. At 



