Autenrioth's Versuche fuer die prakt

When writing the first edition of the Chronic Diseases, I was not as yet acquainted with Autenrioth’s Versuche fuer die prakt. Heilkunde aus den Klinishen Anstalten von Tubingen, 1808. But I saw on examining the work, that what he says about diseases following the driving away of itch through local applications is only a confirmation of what I had already found with the other hundred writers.

He also had observed that the external driving away of itch was followed by ulcers on the feet, pulmonary consumption, hysterical chlorosis, with various menstrual irregularities; white swelling of the knee, dropsy of the joints, epilepsy, amaurosis, with obscured cornea; glaucoma with complete amaurosis; mental derangement, paralysis, apoplexy and curvature of the neck; these he erroneously attributed to the ointments alone.

But his own slow local driving away of the eruption by means of sulphuret of potash and soft soap, which he in vain calls healing it, is in no way better. Just as if his treatment were anything else than a local driving away of the eruption from the skin! Of any true cure he knows just as little as the other Allopaths, for he writes: “It is, of course, absurd to endeavor to cure itch (scab) by internal remedies.” No! it is not only absurd, but even wretched to undertake to cure an internal itch-disease which cannot be cured by any local application, through any but internal means, which alone can cure the disease thoroughly and with certainty.

1 A man 30 to 40 years of age had been afflicted with the itch a long time before, and it had been driven away by ointments; from which time he had become more and more asthmatic. His respiration became at last, even when not in motion, very short and extremely labored, emitting at the same time a continuous hissing sound, but attended with only little coughing. He was ordered an injection of one drachm of squills, and to take internally 3 grains of squills. But by mistake he took the drachm of squills internally. He was near losing his life with an indescribable nausea and retching. Soon after this the itch appeared again on his hands, his feet and his whole body in great abundance, and by this means the asthma was at once removed.

2 The violent asthma was combined with general swelling and fever.

1758, p. 32.3 Beireis - Stammen. Diss. de causis cur imprimis plebs scabie laboret. Helmst., 1792, p. 26.4 Pelargus (Storch) Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1722, p. 435 n 438.5 Breslauer Sammlung v. Jahre, 1727, p. 293.6 Riedlin, the father, Obs. Cent. II., obs. 90. Augsburg, 1691.7 Suffocating Catarrh, Ehrenfr. Hagendorn, hist. med. phys.

3 A man of 32 years had the itch driven away by sulphur ointment, and he suffered for eleven months from the most violent asthma until by drinking birch-juice the eruption was brought back on the twenty-third day.

4 A student was seized with the itch just as he was going to dance, on which account he had it driven out by a practitioner with sulphur ointment. But soon after, he was attacked by such a severe asthma that he could only draw breath by throwing his head back, and was almost suffocated during the attacks. After thus wrestling with death for an hour, he would cough up little cartilaginous pieces which would ease him for a very short time. Having returned home to Osterode he suffered continually for two years of this disease, being attacked about ten times a day, which could not even be mitigated through the help of his physician, Beireis.

5 A boy of 13 years having suffered from his childhood with tinea capitis had his mother remove it for him, but he became very sick within eight or ten days, suffering with asthma, violent pains in the limbs, back and knee, which were not relieved until an eruption of itch broke out over his whole body a month later.

6 Tinea capitis in a little girl was driven away by purgatives and other medicines, but the child was attacked with oppression of the chest, cough and great lassitude. It was not until she stopped taking the medicines, and the tinea broke out again, that she recovered her cheerfulness and this, indeed, quickly.

7 A boy of 5 years suffered for a long time from itch, and when this was driven away by a salve it left behind a severe melancholy with a cough.

Cent. I., hist 8, 9.8 Pelargus, Obs. clin. Jahrg., 1723, p. 15.9

Suffocations from Asthma, Joh. Phil. Brendel, Consilia med., Frft., 1615, Cons. 73. Ephem. Nat. Cur., Ann. II., obs. 313. Wilh. Fabr. V. Hilden, Obs. Cent. III., Obs. 39.10 Ph. R. Vicat, Obs. Pract., obs. 35, Vitoduri, 1780.11 J. J. Waldschmid, Opera, p. 244.12

8 Owing to tinea capitis, which had been driven off by rubbing with almond oil, there arose an excessive lassitude of all the limbs, headache on one side, loss of appetite, asthma, waking up at night with suffocating catarrh, with severe rattling and whistling on the chest and convulsive twisting of the limbs, as if about to die, and hematuria. When the tinea broke out again, he recovered from all these ailments.