Contributions to the pathology and treatment of the scorbutus, which is at present prevalent in various parts of Scotland / by Charles Ritchie.

  • Ritchie, Charles, 1798-1878.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to the pathology and treatment of the scorbutus, which is at present prevalent in various parts of Scotland / by Charles Ritchie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    years; 18, from 40 to 50; and 9 cases have been above tins age. 57 lived mainly on bread and coffee or tea, porridge or brose of oaten, or of pease-meal, without either animal food or vegetables, and were underfed, most of them, even in what they did eat; being also exposed all of them to cold and dampness; 27 had the same food with occasional meals of ham or other butcher meat, but were entirely deprived of fresh vegetables, and were also to a greater or less extent exposed to cold and dampness; the food of 3 is not stated, and that of the dispensary patients has rarely been ascertained. One patient was in better circumstances, and had had better food, but he had been affected with spermator- rhcua for at least a couple of years, and laboured also under hemi- plegia and extensive subcutaneous melanosis. The amount of fresh vegetables, which he had had, was that contained in the broth, which he said he had used several times a week. Another man aged twenty-one,—who, previous to coming to Scotland, had lived on oatmeal porridge and butter-milk, for breakfast; potatoes, eggs, and butter-milk for dinner (except on Suudays when he had pork- ham, and very rarely fresh meat and some vegetables) ; and who, for supper, had been accustomed again to take as at breakfast— continued for months previous to becoming affected with scurvy, but while exposed to great labour, and constant wet and cold at the bottom of the open shaft of a mine, to consume as ascertained on good evidence, every week, about 6 lbs. of fresh butcher meat, 1^ lbs. of cheese, 1 stone of wheaten flour, 1 peck of oatmeal, 4 half-quar- tern loaves, 2 lbs. of decorticated barley, 1^ lbs. of fresh butter, 1^ lbs. of sugar, 2 ounces of tea, and one pennj'-worth of fresh vegetables, and sometimes a little porter. A second patient con- sumed 5 lbs. of cheese per week, and had fresh meat three times a week, besides butter-milk and porridge. A third had sweet milk and porridge morning and evening three times a-week; the other days, butter-milk, treacle or beer; cheese and bread or butter, and, once a week, animal broth for dinner. A fourth had either milk or animal food for dinner daily, and, once a week, some fresh vegeta- bles. Several had had oatmeal porridge with milk morning and even- ing, and sometimes salt meat and bread daily to dinner. Others had, on occasions, porter instead of milk ; and one man breakfasted and supped daily on porridge and milk, and dined either on milk and bread, or about four times a week, on fresh butcher meat; but, notwithstanding these apparent anomalies, the general fact in regard to the food of all was, that it failed in variety, and in the quan- tity of its animal constituents, and that, in all but a fraction of the cases, in which they were very deficient, the patients had been ex- posed for months to a total deprivation of fresh succulent vegetables. I shall now speak shortly of the disease under the divisions respec- tively of its general symptoms, nccroscopical appearances, its causes, and treatment. And first of its general symptouis. These were sucli as instantly served to suggest the idea of a lowered state of health,