Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1884 — How a Cholera Patient Feels. [ARTICLE]

How a Cholera Patient Feels.

The patient feels well up to within a few hours of the attack, or, it may be, goes to bed and sleeps soundly through the night, and immediately on rising in the morning is seized with violent purging and vomiting. If judiciously treated many patients recover from this, the first stage of cholera; but if neglected, the tendency of the disease is to grow rapidly worse. The patient complains of intense thirst and a burning heat at the pit of his stomach; he suffers also excruciating pain from cramps in the muscles jot the extremities; he is terribly restless; and his urgent cry is for water to quench his thirst, and that some one might rub his limbs, and thus relieve the muscular spasm. The pulse is rapid and very weak, the respirations are hurried, and the patient’s voice becomes husky. His countenance is pinched, and the integument of his body feels inelastic and doughy, while the skin of his hands and feet becomes wrinkled and purplish in color. The duration of this, the second stage of cholera, is very uncertain—it may last for two or three hours only, or may continue for twelve or fifteen hours; but so long as the pulse can be felt at the wrist there are still good hopes of the sick person’s recovery. The weaker the pulse becomes, the nearer the patient is to the third, or collapse stage of cholera, from which probably not more than thirty-five per cent, recover. In the third stage of the disease the vomiting, and purging continue, although in a mitigated form; and the skin is covered with a clammy perspiration, especially if the cramps are still severe. The patient remains terribly restless,longing only for sleep, and that he may be supplied with water. His intellect is clear, but he seldom expresses any anxiety regarding worldly affairs, although fully conscious of the dangerous condition he is in. Sleep and a plentiful supply of drinking-wa-ter are the sole desires of a person passing through a collapse stage of cholera. This condition seldom lasts more than twenty-four hours, and reaction either commences within that period or the patient dies in collapse, or passes on into the tepid stage, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ends speedily in death. On the other hand, the sick person having been in the collapse stage of cholera some twenty-four hours (it may be a longer or shorter period), the temperature of his body may begin to rise, gradually creeping up to the normal standard; the.functions of animal life are slowly restored, and the sick person recovers his health.— Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine.