I am aware that children who are subjects of this disease have occasionally periods of exemption from its attacks, though this is not the case when the attacks are so frequent and also violent as in the above case, and it is possible that this child may be again attacked under provocation of difficult dentition or of some equally powerful exciting cause. As there can be no doubt, however, of the controlling power of chlorine over the first attack, I should have no misgivings about its success in subsequent attacks should the condition be the same as before.
In connection with the above remarks upon Chlorine, it may not be amiss to call attention to a kind of spasm of the glottis occasionally produced by chloroform, and which strikingly resembles the spasms produced by Chlorine. Now, by the presence of an alkaline solution, chloroform is readily decomposed, and Chlorine set free. The question at once suggests itself whether in these cases of spasms such a decomposition has been induced by the reaction of the alkaline saliva upon the vapor of chloroform, and whether the spasm is caused by the Chlorine thus set free.
In this case, the spasm of the glottis constituted the whole of the morbid condition. But sometimes spasm of the glottis occurs as a complication of some affection of the throat or of the respiratory apparatus, and in such cases Chlorine may be of great service. In the winter of 1853, I visited in consultation a case of scarlatina, in which sloughing of the pharynx to a great extent had taken place and in which spasm of the glottis had set in, threatening to cause a speedily fatal termination. The attacks of spasm were almost constant, the child, a boy of eight years, scarcely rallying from one paroxysm before another came on. The character of the spasm was precisely such as I had seen produced by Chlorine. Chlorine water was administered, and the spasms ceased instantly, with but one or two very slight recurrences.
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.