Thomas Beddoes to T. G. Estcourt, 13 October 1808
My dear Sir
I received your letter with its enclosure & the report, for all which I thank you –
I have no doubt at all of the propriety of taking blood from the head, even when the pulse is ever so low at the wrist or in the carotids [xxxx] themselves
I may assume to myself to have had as many (if not mine) opportunities of sifting this matter to the bottom as any person in Europe – partly from seeing all the grave cases & dissections in the French prisons & the military hospital & partly from being <often> sent to, when private dissections are to be made –
The result is that the utmost inflammation & congestion may exist in the head & languor in the rest of the circulatory system – In a Miss Berridge to whom I was called last Saturday & in whom I thought the head full of blood, though bleeding had been neglected 9 days, 7 blood vessels were cut open without its being possible to procure anything near the desired quantity of blood – & the patient languished till yesterday in the same state of insensibility in which I saw her first – My representations caused the examination to take place in a few hours after death – Two physicians & two surgeons were present & no one cd conceive a more thoroughly inflamed brain though it had so torpified the circulatory system – The moral in this & 1000 other cases is that no languor of pulse ought to prevent bleeding, if other signs occur of congestion in the head
Your plan is to lose blood from the head & to take tonics or stomachers after – & if you were to dip the head, when clear, in strong brine, it wd be only so much the better – as it wd incorporate the vessels of the head & prevent congestion
I hope to hear soon that you are better & the little people beginning to bathe under promising auspices – Davies Giddy has undertaken to present a paper on the subject I mentioned to you to Mr Secy at War – I suppose in compliment to Mr G. Mr Sy. will look it over – I remain with compts
My dear Sir
yrs truly
T.B.
PS It is true the other day you have had an experiment proving that stomachics did effectually relieve the head – To me it is probable that the congestion in the head enfeebled the stomach; & that the restored vigour of the stomach reacted upon the vessels of brain so as to enable them to exonerate themselves from their superfluous blood – Unluckily, we have no measure here for degrees of accumulation – & where that is great, bleeding, at least topically about the head, proves essential; & therefore it is always prudent to begin with that –
In the case of Miss Berridge I might have added that the pulses were universally weak; & even on Saturday so indistinct that we doubted whether we felt them – yet I ventured to affirm intense inflammation in the head – & no one doubted on dissection that early bleeding wd have easily effected a cure
13 Oct 1808
Address: T. G. Estcourt Esq MP / New Park / Devizes
Endorsement: Dr Beddoes / Octr 14: 1808
Postmark: OCT 13 / 1808
MS: Gloucestershire Archives D1571 F227