A treatise on scrofula / [James Russell].

  • James Russell
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on scrofula / [James Russell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/162 page 6
    Some diseases, too, such as small-pox and hooping-cough, which only occur in conse- quence of exposure to certain exciting causes, are very fatal in particular families; the family fatality demonstrating a peculiarity of heredi- ' tary constitution. But as these diseases have only a casual existence, depending upon ex- trinsic circumstances, they may lie dormant for years, and thus allow a generation to experi- ence a complete exemption from them. It is not, indeed, usual to call small-pox and liooping-cough hereditary diseases, because their appearance is accidental, and their dura- tion transient. This, however, is only a varia- tion of degree, not any real difference in the nature of the affection; for it has already been shewn, that the constitutional predisposition exists in the cases of small-pox and hooping- cough, as well as in the case of those diseases universally esteemed hereditary, although the influence of the predisposition is neither so vi- sible nor so uninterrupted. And whoever turns his attention seriously to the investiga- tion of the subject, will be satisfied that, in employing the expressions hereditary disease or
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