Bloodletting and Germs by Thomas Rosenthal

Author:Thomas Rosenthal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2020-06-25T17:32:44+00:00

Late September of 1835 the heat and humidity of summer returned, and with it miasmic infantile Cholera. Civia had seen infantile Cholera seize infants with fever, vomiting and profuse diarrhea without discriminating between slaves or plantation owners. Panicked parents demanded my immediate attendance. One father carried his son into the office, the child was alive when he left home, dead on arrival. In Philadelphia over two hundred and fifty infants died of infantile Cholera that summer.

Saturday infantile Cholera struck home. Little Lucas awoke fussy from a nap and his diaper was filled with a loose tan colored stool. Civia reported that he nursed poorly and vomited a few minutes later. Millicent sent Civia to call me home from the office. By my arrival, Lucas had commenced an irritable cry pulling his knees up to relieve a tense abdomen. His head and body were feverish, extremities were cold and clammy, and a third diaper overflowed.

Millicent, mother Johnson and Civia took turns sitting with Lucas in the coolest room in our house, that being the deeply shaded storage room at the rear. He was dressed only in a triangular diaper held on by one safety pin. We immersed him in a tepid bath but it did little to relieve his fever. His cry soon weakened to whimpers interrupted by painful moans, vomiting and more loose stool. Civia offered her breast until he seemed too weak to suckle. Mother Johnson prepared a loose tapioca pudding, which Lucas soon vomited.

Millicent urged me to be aggressive. The Eberle and Condi textbooks both blame a firm abdomen on congested bowels and liver. I applied a flaxseed poultice to Lucas’ abdomen to counter inflammation and eight leeches to his temples to relieve the cerebral congestion causing his irritation. Both textbooks recommended one-sixth grain of calomel in union with half a grain of ipecacuanha every hour, but after three doses Lucas’s pulse became feeble and he was unresponsive to the brisk toweling Eberle recommended. I fed him drops of a wine and milk punch to revitalize his sinking energies. As the sun set that evening, the child’s spirit joined that of his mother’s.

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