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Home Extracts. 
A new Method suggested for the Restoration of 
Animal Heat in the collapse Stage of Cholera. 
By Mr. JAMES TURNER, Veterinary Surgeon , London. 
I AM impressed with the belief that an agent I am about to 
propose in the treatment of spasmodic cholera is capable of im- 
parting instantaneously not only the requisite amount of caloric, 
but also an additional vital principle in association with it. Instead 
of enveloping the body of the patient in flannel, 1 would have a 
sheep slaughtered close to his residence, and the whole skin of the 
animal by its flesh side, while reeking, applied to the bare skin 
over the entire trunk and lower extremities of the cholera patient. 
I may be permitted here to state, that upon horses this is the 
only known therapeutic agent which we possess as a sudorific ; but 
so potent is it in operation, that the result may be compared to a 
race-horse’s sweat in body-clothes preparing for a sw'eepslakes : — 
first, it imparts its own animal heat ; secondly, by its weight and 
close adaptation to all the convexities and concavities, it adheres 
most tenaciously, aided in this particular by the retention of some 
contractile quality ; thirdly, it is a counter-irritant, and will occa- 
sionally vesicate or loosen the hair. 
As a renovator , in those cases of prostration of the vital powers 
where the dark colour and thick consistence of the blood indicate 
the abstraction of its vitality, the curative power of this remedy 
has been times and oft thrust upon my notice, when applied to the 
exhausted or overdone hunter. Horses which have been left for 
dead in the field from the severity of the chase, which had lost the 
power of standing and of locomotion, and were obliged to be 
dragged on a gate to the nearest stable, when one or more fresh- 
flayed skins have been applied throughout the spinal region, from 
the poll to the tail, by the following morning have been able to 
walk round their loose box without support. 
In theorizing upon the modus operandi of this agent, I claim for 
it a much higher power than that of conveying a high temperature, 
and maintaining it for a lengthened period. 
Transfusion of blood into the veins has been wisely proposed 
for Asiatic cholera ; my suggestion is an approach to it, without 
having to encounter the prejudices of so formidable a proceeding. 
The pores of the human skin, by the transmission of heat and 
VOL. XXI. 5 A 
