Volume 1

A dictionary of medicine : including general pathology, general therapeutics, hygiene, and the diseases of women and children / by various writers ; edited by Richard Quain ; assisted by Frederick Thomas Roberts and J. Mitchell Bruce ; with an American appendix by Samuel Treat Armstrong.

  • Richard Quain
Date:
1895, ©1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of medicine : including general pathology, general therapeutics, hygiene, and the diseases of women and children / by various writers ; edited by Richard Quain ; assisted by Frederick Thomas Roberts and J. Mitchell Bruce ; with an American appendix by Samuel Treat Armstrong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    probable period at which death had occurred. But hitherto no decided or satisfactory in- formation has been obtained, owing to the varied circumstances which influence the progress of the change, in connexion not only with the condition of the body itself, but also with the character of its surround- ings. The formation of adipocere has a further and a special interest for the patholo- gist. It was the study of this process which led the present writer to discover the analogy which exists between it and fatty degenera- i tion in the living body, and thus to establish | the pathological doctrine that fatty degenera- I tion is the result of a retrograde metamor- phosis, not a form of perverted nutrition. (See Medical and Chvrurgical Transactions, vol. xxxiii.) Richard Quain. _ ADIPOSIS.—A term which properly signifies either general corpulency, or ] accumulation of adipose tissue in or upon an organ. See Fatty Growth ; and Obesity. ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS, in New York State.—A series of ranges rising from a plateau 2,000 feet above the sea, with picturesque lakes between them. Highest altitude, Marcy, 5,337 feet. Commodious hotels on the shores of the lakes. Much < frequented as a summer climatic resort. Recommended in phthisis. See Climate, Treatment of Disease by. ADYNAMIA V , „, ADYNAMIC / (a' pnv'' ovvafus, power).—Terms indicating serious depression of the vital powers. The noun is employed as | synonymous with the ' typhoid condition.' The adjective is applied to diseases in which the phenomena of this condition are promi- | nent. See Typhoid Condition. 5IGOPHONY (al£, a goat; and (jxovr), voice).—A peculiar alteration of the reson- ance of the voice, as heard on auscultation of the chest, compared to the bleating of a goat. See Physical Examination. 2ETIOLOGY (atria, cause; and \6yos, word).—That branch of pathological science which deals with the causation of disease. See Disease, Causes of. AFFINITY.—This term is the designa- tion of a property by which elementary and compound substances unite with one another and form new compounds. It is, therefore, a property with which chemists are princi- pally concerned. But the ideas suggested to the chemist by the term affinity are also, though less explicitly, excited in the mind of the pathologist and of the therapeutist by certain classes of facts frequently falling under their observation. The pathologist, for instance, knows that saline or earthy matter is very prone to accumulate in the midst of degenerated tissue in the walls of an artery or of a cardiac valve, so as to give rise- to a patch of ' calcification '; he knows that in a gouty patient urate of sodium is most apt to accumulate and form ' chalk stones' in the tissues around affected joints ; he knows that, however it may be administered, arsenic in poisonous doses tends to produce inflamma- tion of the alimentary canal, that strychnine acts with preference upon the nervous system, and that in ordinary cases of lead-poisoning this metal interferes especially with the nutrition of the extensor muscles of the forearm. Applications of the same notion in the department of therapeutics are equallv familiar in respect to the action of many drugs. It may be regarded as an ascertained fact that iodide of potassium tends especially to influence the nutrition of the fibrous structures in the body, and that bromide of potassium has a no less certain action in modifying the nutrition of the nervous centres in many unhealthy states. Again, there is a whole class of substances which when takeri into the system have, whatever their other actions may be, an undoubted effect in modifying the functional activity of the kidney. We have in nitrite of amyl and in nitroglycerine remedies possessing a remark- able influence over the unstriped muscular fibres of the arteries and bronchi, or else over the nerve-centres by which they are con- trolled. We have in woorara an agent which acts especially upon the motor side of the nervous system; and we have in digitalis an important remedy which, amidst its other effects, seems to have a decided power of improving the activity of the cardiac ganglia. The recent progress of therapeutics encour- ages us to hope that more and more of these specific effects of drugs will be accurately determined, so that the notion implied by the term affinity may, after a time, have a deeper meaning than at present for the- practitioner of medicine.1 See Antagonism. H. Charlton Bastian. AFFUSION.—A method of treatment which consists in pouring a fluid, usually water, either cold or warm, upon the patient. See Water, Therapeutics of; and Baths. AFRICA, SOUTH.—The portion of this continent lying between 22° and 35° south latitude, and 18° and 32° east longitude, and including Cape Colony, Natal, Bechuanaland„ 1 Dr. James Blake states that we must look else- where than to chemistry for the nature of the re- actions between living matter and the reagents with which we may bring them in contact: and that this problem will be solved when the spectroscopic characters of the elements are better known. He holds that not only are toxic actions not chemical actions, but also that the whole direct action (of1 metallic salts) on the most important functions of living matter is a physical molecular action deter- mined by the number and character of the harmonic vibrations of which the reagents are the seat. (Comptes Bendus de la Soc. de Biologie, 1890.)