On the medical history and treatment of diseases of the teeth and the adjacent structures : being lectures delivered before the members of the College of Dentists of England in the session 1858-9. / by Benjamin Ward Richardson.

  • Benjamin Ward Richardson
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the medical history and treatment of diseases of the teeth and the adjacent structures : being lectures delivered before the members of the College of Dentists of England in the session 1858-9. / by Benjamin Ward Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    HEREDITARY DISEASES. general. It can only be deranged by tlie mediam. of external agencies, wliicb affect it by one of three ways—^■)]i,ysically, as wlien it is subjected to accident; chemiccdly, as when it is subjected to the influence of a poison ; pkysiologically, as when by some abnormal condition in which it is placed, the normal acts are deranged and changed into pathological conditions. A ladder slips from me, and I am brought to mother earth, with dislocation of my shoulder or cracked head. A physical external cause forsooth happens to me. I take mercury to saturation, and a train of ineradicable evils follows. A chemical external cause has laid hold of me. I eat and drink too much— I eat and drink too little; I sleep not enough—I sleep too long ; I tax my body over-hard—I tax my brain; and causes acting on me from without, and physiologically, mark me ; as a consequence, I contract gout, or marasmus; muscular hyper- trophy, or mental imbecility ; the disease according to the cause. To apply these considerations to the particular subject now before us, we may learn, 1st. That the most local disorder—of the teeth, for example, such as arises from injuiy, compression, or the action on these organs of a chemical agent—will extend more or less to the body at large. 2ndly. That when a local affection, say of the teeth or their adjacent structures, occurs, as the result of constitutional mal- condition, the true origin of such mal-condition is through the system, not of it; that is to say, from some external influence acting constitutionally. Against the rule here urged as to the external origin of diseases, one exception might be claimed. While it would generally be admitted that the constitutional disorders which arise from accidents, from the effects of poisons, organic or in- organic, from the effects of insufficient or over-sufficient foods or drinks, from uncleanliness, from atmospheric variations, and from occupations and pursuits, have cleai-ly an origin out of the body, it may be argued tliat those diseases which pass from parent to oflPspring, and which are known as hereditary, certainly are derived