An Experiment With Typhus

Let us go back a few years further, in our story, to gratify a natural curiosity as to why Dr. Wright had “often wished to try on others” the cold douche for the relief of typhus fever. The surgeon on a ship calling at Jamaica had related to Dr. Wright a “queer thing that happened” on the voyage. “A serious epidemic of typhus fever had broken out among his crew,” the bunkers were all filled with patients, and the supply of medicines was exhausted. Not finding room below, some of the sufferers were forced to stay on deck. Naturally the most hopeless cases were chosen to endure such exposure in the open air, where, with no medicine available for them, only death could be expected. When some of these fever-racked patients begged their companions to pour buckets of water over them, the physician consented, believing that the cold application would only the sooner end their sufferings.SHM 29.4

The results were surprising. While the patients in their bunks, who were carefully protected from the cold air and kept warm with blankets, grew worse, and many died, most of their fellow sufferers who were lying on the hard deck, not only exposed to the heat of the sun but soaked with sea water, recovered. (Logan Clendenning, M.D., Behind the Doctor, 296, 297. New York: The Garden City Publishing Company, 1933.)SHM 30.1

Dr. Wright, to whom this incident was related, kept it in mind and wondered, but feared the risk of a charge of malpractice that might have resulted if he should use such a method in his work. Now that he had tried it on himself and on another patient with gratifying results, he felt free to recommend it to others, and in the summer of 1778 he wrote for a medical journal an account of the successful treatment of fever by means of ablution. His article caught the eye and thoughtful attention of Dr. James Currie, of Liverpool, England, one of the staff physicians in the large hospital in that city, to whom we are indebted for the story of Dr. Wright’s experience.SHM 30.2

Soon after this an epidemic of typhus fever raged in Liverpool, and many cases were brought to the hospital. Dr. Currie’s associates were shocked and horrified when he prescribed the cold water treatment for several of the cases under his care. But their horror was changed to astonishment when they beheld the remarkable curative effects of the treatment; for all recovered, and the mortality rate was still high among those treated according to the accepted methods.SHM 30.3

After further study of the matter and after experimentation with various methods of applying water to the sick, Dr. Currie brought out in 1797 the book from which we have quoted. It was widely read and ran through several editions. But though it created an interest in the subject, it did not lead to the general adoption of hydropathy, as it was termed, by the medical profession; and after a few years the matter was largely forgotten.SHM 30.4