Thomas Beddoes to James Watt, 5 January 1796
Dear Sir
Mrs Kerr continued without feverish chills & heats between the day I wrote my letter & that on which I left Bristol – The y. bark / xxv grs with Sal. C. C. gr thrice a day) produced pain of the side & made the cough harder. In a less dose it had not, I think, that effect.
Yesterday I saw Mr Shephard, who has had a small apps – Hdc has always taken off the asthmatic stricture & made the respiratory process quite free, when he has taken fresh cold. It weakened & depressed him. I had advised to take Hdc & ox. mixed when he had no cough or tightness & indeed to try ox by itself. This last produced stricture as I have seen it in asthma. I have now advised him to try hydrogen.
I am now with a patient whose case is singular; it wd probably do great credit to oxygen, if I can get the trial made. R.W. aged + LX, temperate, active & healthy, had a succession of brewings of bad middling beer – being very domestic & not of much resources, instead of taking wine & spirits & water, he quenched his thirst with apples & pears. He fell away & grew weaker. In 6–8 weeks some oedematous tumours appeared in various parts – <next> his legs regularly swelled – the skin influenced, I suppose, from the stimulus of the subcutaneous lymph <or distention>. Will not the skin of a man, who becomes annasarcous from lowered diet, be more liable to erysiplelas than where anasarca is induced by hard living as here. the irritability is exhausted from the skin; in the former case accumulated – Decr 18 (some time after the dropsical apps) palsy of the left leg & foot, which is now confined to the foot. This I ascribe to ye same remote cause. I see not why the nerves & absorbents may not be simultaneously injured by a weakening power. In the dropsy of the debauched apoplexy often supervenes. If digitalis, gradually amended diet – opium in small doses, warm bathing do not succeed, ox. shall be tried, if I can prevail. The day I left Clifton, I had enquired out a typhoid small-poxed child. The case being quite desperate, I was going to try oxygene – but by the time I cd get the bag & air-holder 5 or 6 beldames had assembled. They grew frantic on seeing the air-holder as if it had been a coffin – so I was drove off & thought myself happy to escape a mobbing. Yrs
T.B.
Address: Mr Watt / Heathfield / Birmingham
Endorsement: Dr Beddoes, Ludlow / Jany 5th 1796
MS: LoB MS 3219/4/28/26