BLOODLETTING IN PNEUMONIA

John Haddon
BLOODLETTING IN PNEUMONIA.
Sir, Dr. Balms's communication in the Journal of June 5th, p. 970,
telling how he treats some cases of pneumonia, deserves to be
noticed.
It was the late Professor John Jughes Bennet who first advocated the
expectant treatment of pneumonia, and his book on the subject was
translated into many languages.
I acted as his resident in the clinical wards of the Edinburgh Royal
Infirmary, and , by his directions, I occasionally bled patients.
Bennet would have bled the cases Dr. Balm describes , and if the idea
is original on his part , he deserves credit.
Talking about his letter with a medical friend , he told me that he
had a patient whose nose bled profusely; he failed to stop it, and the
late Dr. Joseph Bell was consulted he told my friend that his father
would , in such a case , have opened a vein, and that was what Dr.
Joseph Bell did.
He did not take more than two tablespoonsfuls of blood , and there was
no more bleeding from the nose.
Our grandfathers used to be bled every spring, and I have heard
Professor Bennet tell of the row of patients waiting to be bled.
Lanquid and lazy before being bled, they felt as if their youth were
renewed by the bleeding.
I heard Sir T. Clifford Allbutt tell of having had a patient suffering
from a pulse of very high tension, who was kept for a year by one
venesection; in these days of so-called sudden death from heart
failure or apoplexy , which I look upon as an opprobrium to the
physician, it would be well to resort to an annual bleeding aagain,
unless the profession can be converted to the views set forth in my
book which proves that food is the chief cause of disease, and
restricts the quantity , as well as changes the quality , of the
patients food.
In what has been called "idiopathic anasarca" we have a neurosis , due
to what the ancient physicians called plethora, which was just too
much blood, and which venesecton removed.
Such anasarca is almost universal after middle life, and I have found
it in some quite young , proving that even the youngest may be injured
by the food they eat.
Such facts ought to encourage the study of dietetics which the General
Medical Council would do well to make a compulsory subject of
examination for every licence to practice medicine. -- I am, etc.,
Hawick June 7th, John Haddon, M.D.
Who loves ya.
Tom