Title:
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The general treatment of enteric fever
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To tabulate briefly then his conclusions the writer is of opinion that: (1) There is no specific treatment for Enteric Fever. (2) No drug will shorten its natural course. (3) A strictly antiseptic treatment gives slighty better results than a purely expectant symptomatic treatment. (4) Antipyretic treatment is undesirable and often dangerous. (5) Eliminative treatment is the most satisfactory and this can be secured by the use of calomel and irrigation of the large intestine. It has been well said that we cannot treat Typhoid fever but only the Typhoidized, that is to say the organism whose own force is reacting against the poison. What the physician has to do is not to interfere with the efforts of nature to expel or destroy the germ, but to support the human organism and so far as is possible to assist nature. One of the first great principles of Medicine, which the writer was taught as a student, was to 'favour Elimination' and his experience of Enteric Fever has not led him to prefer any other principle in the treatment of that disease.
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