Page:Biographical Memoir of John C Otto MD.djvu/13

 New Hampshire. The females of the family were exempt from the idiosyncrasy, but still were capable of transmitting it to their male children. After the use of various remedies, under the direction of the most skillful physicians, without success, during a period of many years, the sulphate of soda, in an ordinary purging dose, and repeated two or three days in succession, was found to be completely successful in arresting the discharge, and was afterwards constantly employed by the family, thus disarming this extraordinary and fearful malady of its terrors.

In 1805, another paper, upon the same subject, was published by Dr. Otto in Coxe's Medical Museum, detailing the history of four fatal cases of hereditary hemorrhage occurring in the family of Benjamin Binny, of Maryland.

These papers were, so far as I am informed, the first which had appeared upon the subject of this singular idiosyncrasy, and gave rise to others from different writers, by which many curious facts were developed;—the most elaborate of which was from the pen of Dr. Reynell Coates, and appeared in the North American Medical and Surgical Journal for July, 1828.

In the 9th vol. of the Eclectic Repertory, we find a short, but exceedingly valuable, paper on the cure of chronic rheumatism, in the form of a letter from Dr. Otto to J. D. Spragins, which appears to be an answer to certain inquiries of the latter gentleman, in reference to the Doctor's treatment of this disease in the Pennsylvania Hospital.

This plan of treatment appears to have been peculiar to Dr. Otto, and consisted in the administration of small doses of calomel and opium, night and morning; continued until salivation was induced, and resumed on the decline of the ptyalism, so as to keep up the mercurial action for three or four weeks. In some constitutions, in which a severe or protracted salivation might be