On the pathology of night-sweating in phthisis : and the mode of action of strychnia and other remedies in it / by T. Lauder Brunton.
- Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
- Date:
- [1879]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the pathology of night-sweating in phthisis : and the mode of action of strychnia and other remedies in it / by T. Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![[Ecprinted from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports, Vol. XV.] 12L. OX THE PATHOLOGY OF NIGHT-SWEATING IN PHTHISIS, AND THE MODE OF ACTION OF STRYCHNIA AND ' OTHER REMEDIES IN IT. BY T. LAUDER BRUNTON, M.D., F.R.S. After the niglit-sweats wliicli occur in ])lithisis the patients are very exliausted, and not unfrequently feel a certain soreness of the limbs similar to that which occurs in healthy per.sons after great exertion. The exhaustion produced by the sweating is sometimes attributed to the actual loss of material from the body in the perspiration, but this can hardly be the case, as the amount of nutritive matter contained in the sweat is very small, and we notice that the perspiration which occurs in healthy ])ersons after exertion does not cause any feeling of weakness. It occurred to me, therefore, that instead of the sweating being the cause of the exhaustion in phthisis, the exhaustion and the sweat were both consequences of one common cause. In order to discover what this cause may be, it may be well to proceed to track, as it were, the process of sweating backwards, until we tind some condition that may account both for it and for the weakness. Now, the production of sweat is due to the functional activity of the secreting cells in the sweat glands, which remove from the blood a quantity of water and salts, and pour it out upon the surface of the skin. For the functional activity of these cells two things are requisite : the one is a sup{)ly of blood to them which will provide them with the fluid necessary to form the sweat; the second is the nervous stimulus imparted to them by the secreting nerves, which excites them to functional activity. It is only recently that the importance of these nerves as a factor in the secretion of sweat has been fully recognised, although various circumstances seemed to point to the fact that](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2242944x_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
