Therapeutics

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EXTRAORAL MEDICATION. Inunctions. Inunction constitutes the most efficacious and the speediest way of inducing mercurial saturation. Inunction is therefore indicated in cases in which an intense mer- curialization of the entire organism must be obtained with the least possible delay; as, for...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EXTRAORAL MEDICATION. Inunctions. Inunction constitutes the most efficacious and the speediest way of inducing mercurial saturation. Inunction is therefore indicated in cases in which an intense mer- curialization of the entire organism must be obtained with the least possible delay; as, for example, in certain cases of iritis, iridocyclitis, or iridochoroiditis, accompanied by violent inflammatory phenomena, whether they be due to syphilis or to traumatic infection, as in sympathetic ophthalmitis. Inunctions are also invaluable in cases in which, owing to the refusal of the patient or other reason, subcutaneous or intravenous injection is forbidden. For the purpose of securing rapid action, inunction may be combined with hypodermic injection. To these may be added subcon- junctival injections when the latter are indicated by the gravity of the local lesions, and when the general administration of mercury has brought about only enough improvement to show that such treatment though efficacious is inadequate. Under such circumstances, one or two local injections may be followed by rapid cure. In such cases subconjunctival injections give a needed impetus at the opportune moment, and have provoked a supreme effort on the part of the natura medicatrix. Although mercurial inunctions have a prompt and efficacious action when carried out under the direction of the practitioner, their effect becomes irregular and illusory when they are left in the hands of the patient. A method so inconvenient and repulsive is always avoided by thesufferer unless properly guided and disciplined by his medical attendant. Mercurial ointment which has vaso- gen or lanolin as its base, keeps well and is better absorbed than the familiar Neopolitan ointment. For an adult, 4 grms. an...