Volume 1 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE EFFICACY OF COMMON SALT, IN THE CURE OF HÆMOPTYSIS.

From the present established opinions and practice respecting the cause and cure of hæmoptysis, the last medicine that would occur to a regular-bred physician for the cure of it, is COMMON SALT; and yet I have seen and heard of a great number of cases, in which it has been administered with success.

The mode of giving it is to pour down from a tea to a table-spoonful of clean fine salt, as soon as possible after the hæmorrhage begins from the lungs. This quantity generally stops it; but the dose must be repeated daily for three or four days, to prevent a return of the disease. If the bleeding continue, the salt must be continued till it is checked, but in larger doses. I have heard of several instances in which two table spoons-full were taken at one time for several days.

It sometimes excites a sickness at the stomach, and never fails to produce a burning sensation in the throat, in its passage into the stomach, and considerable thirst afterwards.

I have found this remedy to succeed equally well in hæmorrhages, whether they occurred in young or in old people, or with a weak or active pulse.

I had prescribed it for several years before I could satisfy myself with a theory, to account for its extraordinary action upon the human body. My inquiries led me to attend more particularly to the following facts:

1. Those persons who have been early instructed in vocal music, and who use their vocal organs moderately through life, are seldom affected by a hæmorrhage from the lungs.

2. Lawyers, players, public cryers, and city watchmen, all of whom exercise their lungs either by long or loud speaking, are less affected by this disease, than persons of other occupations.

I acknowledge I cannot extend this observation to the public teachers of religion. I have known several instances of their being affected by hæmoptysis; but never but one in which the disease came on in the pulpit, and that was in a person who had been recently cured of it. The cases which I have seen, have generally been brought on by catarrhs.

To this disease, the practice of some of our American preachers disposes them in a peculiar manner; for it is very common with this class of them, to expose themselves to the cold or evening air, immediately after taking what a celebrated and eloquent preacher used to call a pulpit sweat.

3. This hæmorrhage chiefly occurs in debilitated habits, or in persons afflicted by such a predisposition to consumption, as indicates a weak and relaxed state of the lungs.

4. It generally occurs when the lungs are in a passive state; as in sitting, walking, and more frequently in lying. Many of the cases that I have known, have occurred during sleep, in the middle of the night.

From these facts, is it not probable that the common salt, by acting primarily and with great force upon the throat, extends its stimulus to the bleeding vessel, and by giving it a tone, checks the further effusion of blood?

I shall only add to this conjecture the following observations:

1. I have never known the common salt perform a cure, where the hæmorrhage from the lungs has been a symptom of a confirmed consumption. But even in this case it gives a certain temporary relief.

2. The exhibition of common salt in the hæmoptysis, should by no means supersede the use of occasional bleeding when indicated by plethora, nor of that diet which the state of the pulse, or of the stomach, may require.

3. I have given the common salt in one case with success, in a hæmorrhage from the stomach, accompanied by a vomiting; and have heard of several cases in which it has been supposed to have checked a discharge of blood from the nose and uterus, but I can say nothing further in its favour in these last hæmorrhages, from my own experience.

It may perhaps serve to lessen the prejudices of physicians against adopting improvements in medicine, that are not recommended by the authority of colleges or universities, to add, that we are indebted to an old woman, for the discovery of the efficacy of common salt in the cure of hæmoptysis.