DIPTHHERIA AND CROUP CURE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2361, 27 August 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

DIPTHHERIA AND CROUP CURE.

In a report to the French Academy of Medicine, Dr. Deithell stated that the vapors of liquid tar and turpentine would dissolve the fibrinous exhalations which choke up the throat in croup and diphtheria. Ho desoriped the proceus thus: •* Take equal parts (say two tablespoonfuls) of turpentine and liquid tar, put them into a tin pan or cup and set fire to the mixture, taking care to have a large pan under it as a safeguard against fire. A dense resinous smoke arises, making the room dark. The patient immediately seems to experience relief ; the choking and the rattle stop ; the patient falls into a slumber and seems to inhale the smoke with pleasure. Tho fibrinous membrane soon becomes detached, and the patient coughs up miorohiedes. These, when caught in a glass, may be seen to dissolve in the smoke. In the course of three or four days the patient entirely recovers.” Tho above information has been largely copied into the papers, and with it the relief and cure of Ruth Lockwood, a nine-year-old child, who was dangerously sick with diphtheria, but tho disease readily yielded to the above mode of treatment, and tho child was cured. A case occurring in Boston recently is worthy of note at this particular time, when the two forms of disease are quite prevalent. The facts in the case, in brief, are ns follows: Jennie Brown, a child of some five years of ago, was dangerously sick with diptheria ; her attending physician had no hopes of her recovery ; he declared to a person that out of tho many oases under his treatment three were bey ond cure, and little Jennie was one of that number. The father of the child had read of tho above treatment, and on his own responsibility—and that, too. without consultation with tho attending physician—ho obtained tho mixture, taking two tablospoonf ills of each but ho now- considers ono of each would have been sufficient and there would have been less danger of burning the carpet, &c. The child was in bed breathing so loud that it could be heard all over the hauso ; but as soon as the tar and turpentine began to burn she was relieved, and breathed quite freely, and soon commenced to cough and raise ; and, to the father’s surprise and delight, she commenced to gain from that moment. He followed up this treatment for three nights, the attending physician approving it, and tho child to-day is well. The other two children alluded to above did not have this form of treatment, and they are numbered with the dead.

This remedy may not be an infallible cure in all cases, and with all persons, but surely it could do no harm in cases that have been given up as incurable by the medical men. The father said that he would advise the removal from the apartment where this treatment is to be applied of all articles that would be likely to bo injured by the smoke of the ingredients, before setting fire to the mixture.—St. Louis Globe Democrat.