then another were called into consultation with him. Laxatives slowly removed it. Mr. Davies has not described the state of the mouth; but the first physician mistook the salivation for a mercurial one.[1] In the same journal which contains this case another has been related which lasted four months.[2] Another very remarkable case has been recorded by Mr. Power. The patient, a young lady, discharged for more than two years from sixteen to forty ounces of saliva daily. In the last two cases the mouth was not affected.[3] Two other instances have been related by M. Bayle, in one of which the patient was cured after spitting five pounds daily for nine years and a half; while the other continued to be affected after spitting profusely for three years. In neither was there any ulceration of the mouth.[4] An instance has been related by an Italian physician, Dr. Petrunti, where, in the course of various nervous affections of the hysteric character, the patient became affected with heat and tightness in the throat, and so profuse a salivation for two months, that between three and four pounds were discharged daily.[5] A case somewhat similar is related in Rust's Magazin of a man who suffered upwards of two years from a daily salivation alternating occasionally with a mucous discharge from the bowels or lungs.[6] M. Guibourt describes the case of a lady who had an attack of profuse salivation every thirty, forty, or fifty days, lasting between twenty-four and forty-eight hours, and unaccompanied with any other affection of the mouth or adjoining parts except a sense of tightness in the throat.[7] M. Gorham relates an interesting case of a lady who in three successive pregnancies was attacked soon after impregnation with excessive ptyalism, which continued to the extent of between two and four quarts daily until the period of quickening on two occasions, and on the third till her delivery; but there was never any fetor or any affection of the gums.[8] I have likewise met with a singular case where spontaneous ptyalism accompanied an ulcerated sore throat of the mercurio-syphilitic kind. The patient had taken mercury to salivation about six months before coming under my care, and got completely rid of both the sore throat and salivation. But the sore throat returned, together with the salivation, two months before I saw him, and the salivation continued for two months longer to the extent of twenty or even thirty ounces daily,—the ulcer of the throat during that interval being sometimes healed up, and again returning as severely as ever. In three weeks more the discharge rapidly diminished, and ceased. During all the time he was under my care there was no fetor of the breath, and no redness, ulceration, or sponginess of the gums. A singular account of an epidemic salivation which occurred in connection with a continued tertian fever,
- ↑ Lond. Med. and Phys. Journal, xxvi. 452.
- ↑ Ibid. xxvii. 275.
- ↑ Trans. Lond. Coll Phys. i. 34.
- ↑ Revue Medicale, 1828, iv. 76.
- ↑ Ibidem, 1829, i. 467, from Osservatore Medico di Napoli, Febb. 1829.
- ↑ Dr. Tott, in Rust's Magazin für die gesammte Heilkunde, xxxv. 50.
- ↑ Journ. de Chem. Med. ix. 197.
- ↑ London Medical Gazette, 1837-38, ii. 578.
