Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1215

THOMAS SUTTON (1767-1835) Abhandlung über das Delirium tremens. In Wilhelm Kaiser's Comptoir für Literatur 1820 xlii, 74 pp. 18.5 cm.

Sutton studied medicine at London and Edinburgh, and received his degree from Leiden in 1787. He served as an army physician for some years and then entered private practice at Greenwich. Practicing as he did along the coast of Kent where duty-free liquor was plentiful, he had ample opportunity to observe the long-term effects of alcohol on the human body. His experience in treating patients suffering from excess alcoholic consumption led him to distinguish delirium tremens from other forms of delirium. As a result, Sutton has been credited with first describing delirium tremens as a distinct clinical entity. Sutton first published his account of the disorder in a book entitled Tracts on delirium tremens, on peritonitis, and on some other internal inflammatory affections, and on the gout at London in 1813. The section on delirium tremens has here been translated by Philipp Heineken (1789-1871), the Bremen physician.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 4925 (English ed., 1813); Osler 4058 (English ed., 1813); Waller 9370 (English ed., 1813)