R---- Howgate, a man much addicted to intemperance, particularly in
the use of spirituous liquors, AEt. 60, was admitted into the Hospital
near Birmingham, _May_ 17, 1783. He complained of difficulty of
breathing, attended with cough, particularly troublesome on lying
down; drowsiness and frequent dozing, from which he was roused by
startings, accompanied with great anxiety and oppression about the
breast; oedematous swellings of the legs; constant desire to make
water, which he passed with difficulty, and only by drops; pulse weak
and irregular; body rather costive; face much emaciated; no appetite
for food.--Cap. pil. scil. iii. ter in die.[6]
[Footnote 6: R. Rad. scil. recent. sapon. castiliens. pulv.
Rhei opt. aa. [Symbol: scruple]i. ol. junip. gutt. xvi. syr.
bals. q. s. f. mass. in pil. xxiv. divid.]
_May_ 20th. The pills have had no effect.--Cap. mistur. c.[7] Decoct.
Digital. &c. cochl. ii. larg. 3tia quaque hora, ad 3tiam vicem.
[Footnote 7: Prepared in the same manner as in the former
case.]
_May_ 21st. Made near two quarts of water in the night, without being
in the least sick. He continued the use of the mixture three times in
the day till the 30th, and made about three pints of water daily, by
which means the swellings were entirely taken away; and his other
complaints so much relieved, that on the 6th of June he was dismissed
free from complaint, except a slight cough. But returning to his old
course of life, he hath had frequent attacks of his disorder, which
have been always removed by using the Digitalis.
Extract of a letter from Mr. LYON,
Surgeon, at Tamworth.
--Mr. Moggs was about 54 years of age, his disease a dropsy of the
abdomen, attended with anasarcous swellings of the limbs, &c. brought
on by excessive drinking. I believe the first symptoms of the disease
appeared the beginning of November, 1776; the medicines he took before
you saw him, were squills in different forms, sal diureticus and
calomel, but without any good effect; he begun the Digitalis on the
10th of July 1777; a few doses of it caused a giddiness in the head,
and almost deprived him of sight, with very great nausea, but very
little vomiting, after which a considerable flow of urine ensued, and
in a very short time, a very little water remained either in the
cavity of the abdomen, or the membrana adiposa, but he remained
excessive weak, with a fluttering pulse at the rate of 150 or
frequently 160 in a minute; he kept pretty free from water for upwards
of twelve months; it then collected, and neither the Digitalis nor
any other medicine would carry it off. I tapped him the 2d of August
1779 in the usual place, and took some gallons of water from him, but
he very soon filled again, and as he had a very large rupture, a
considerable quantity of the water lodged in the scrotum, and could
not be got away by tapping in the usual place. I therefore (on the
28th of the same month) made an incision into the lower part of the
scrotum, and drained off all the water that way, but he was so very
much reduced, that he died the 8th or 9th of _September_ following,
which was about two years and two months after he first begun the
Digitalis.
I have had several dropsical patients relieved, and some perfectly
recovered by the Digitalis, since you attended Mr. Moggs, but as I did
not take any notes or make any memorandums of them, cannot give you
any of them.
Communications from Dr. STOKES,
Physician, in Stourbridge.
Dear SIR,
I accept with pleasure your invitation to communicate what I know
respecting the properties of _Digitalis_; and if an account of what
others had discovered before you,[8] with a detail of my own
experience, shall be allowed the merit of at least a well meant
acknowledgment, for the early communication you were so kind to make
me, of the valuable properties you had found in it; I shall consider
my time as well employed. A knowledge of what has been already done is
the best ground work of future experiment; on which account I have
been the more full on this subject, in hopes that given with the
cautions which you mean to lay down in the cure of dropsies, it may
prove alike useful in that of other diseases, one of which stands
foremost among the _opprobria_ of medicine.
[Footnote 8: See this account in the Introduction.]