On the use of the oil of Eucalyptus globulus combined with other antiseptics, in the treatment of scarlet fever and all infectious diseases / by J. Brendon Curgenven.

  • Curgenven, J. Brendon (John Brendon), 1831-1903.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the use of the oil of Eucalyptus globulus combined with other antiseptics, in the treatment of scarlet fever and all infectious diseases / by J. Brendon Curgenven. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    9/18 (page 5)
    said that it is not, moreover, A prim'i impossible to imagine that antiseptics circulating in the blood-stream may be germicidal to pathogenic organisms, the results of which are seen in disease. Up to the present time, however, all trials with such an idea seem to have been without beneficial effect. My experience proves that the vapour of eucalyptus destroys not only the spores of the pathogenic bacillus of scarlet fever, but the bacillus itself after it has set up the pathological train of symptoms constituting the fever, and is being rapidly generated in the blood and tissues of the patient. Thymol and other disinfectants, when dissolved in an essential oil, retain their power; and a combination of these aromatic and camphoraceous disinfectants forms as powerful a solution as can be required for the destruction of any infectious poison. It Avas an axiom of Dr. Paris that a combination of several therapeutic agents, in smaller pro- portion than is required by any one singly to take effect, pro- duces a far greater and a better effect than any one in a larger proportion. The same rule is applicable to disin- fectants ; a better and a stronger effect is obtained by mixing- several together, for while any one singly of the strength used would have no effect, their combined action is most powerful. I only state a well-established fact, that all the essential and balsamic oils of aromatic trees and plants are excellent antiseptics, they readily volatilise, and in doing so liberate ozone, thus exercising powerful antiseptic influence. This power of liberating ozone makes eucalyptus and other aromatic oils valuable for use in sick-rooms, and in fact in all rooms that are continuously occupied. They act better if diffused through the air by means of a spray diffuser. If the bedroom and the pillows are sprayed at night the sleeper will sleep more comfortably, and awake in the morning more refreshed from sleeping in an ozonised atmosphere. Eucalyptus is a true disinfectant, as it has the power of destroying the active matter or the infective germs gene- rated in and discharged by a person passing through any of the eruptive or infectious fevers, and which, received by a healthy person into his system, develops the same train of symptoms, the same fever from which the former was suffering. Eucalyptus destroys the malarial poisons, which in the human system develop the various short or lon/r malarial fevers, such as ague, jungle fever, Eoman fever, rock fever, influenza, etc.; of this we may now rest assured from the experience gained in Italy, Africa, India, and America, by planting the tree extensively in malarial dis-