SPECIAL ARTICLE

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Dr. O'Shaughnessy promised to submit a "detailed report in which the mode of analysis and so forth will be minutely described." This he presently did. Meanwhile a general practitioner in the small city of Leith in Scotland who read his Lancet faithfully saw at once the therapeutic implications of Dr. O'Shaughnessy's observations. The name of this enterprising doctor was Thomas Latta, and to him belongs the credit of being the first to employ intravenous injection of a solution of sodium salts to replace losses incurred by diarrhoea. His first patient was an old lady severely sick with the cholera. The dramatic outcome of this historic adventure in therapy is recorded in a beautifully written report which Dr. Latta sent to the Lancet, May 23, 1832. He tells us that "she had apparently reached the last moments of her earthly existence and now nothing could injure her—indeed so entirely was she reduced that I feared that I should be unable to get my apparatus ready ere she expired. Having inserted a tube into the basilic vein, cautiously—anxiously I watched the effects: ounce after ounce was injected but no visible change was produced. Still persevering, I thought she began to breathe less laboriously. Soon the sharpened features, and sunken eyes and fallen jaw pale and cold, bearing the manifest impress of death's signal began to glow with returning animation, the pulse which had long ceased returned to the wrist, at first small and quick, by degrees it became more distinct, fuller, slower, firmer and in the short space of half an hour when six pints had been injected she was free from all uneasiness, actually became jocular, and fancied that all she needed was a little sleep; her extremities were warm and every feature bore the aspect of comfort and health."

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: