The Croonian lectures for 1864 : delivered before the president and fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of England : the significance of dropsy, as a symptom in renal, cardiac, and pulmonary diseases / by W.R. Basham.

  • Basham, W. R. (William Richard), 1804-1877.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Croonian lectures for 1864 : delivered before the president and fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of England : the significance of dropsy, as a symptom in renal, cardiac, and pulmonary diseases / by W.R. Basham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    But we know, sir, that practically such treatment can rarely be carried out, except by persons in a better sphere of life. For far otherwise is the fate of those who, in the lower class of life, not only have to earn their bread by their physical powers, but who also, from the very deficiency of those powers, are exposed to defective nourishment, scanty clothing, and perhaps irregular and depraved habits. In such the progress of degeneration is rapid. The tissues everywhere, as in renal dropsy—slowly in some cases, more rapidly in others—lose their power of selection of nitrogenized material for the development of vigorous cell formation. The structures insidiously, but fatally, descend in the scale of development; and tissues, the cells of which should be distinguished by a nucleus of highly nitrogenized matter, now possess but the power of abstracting hydro-carbonized products, and a fatty and amyloid degradation of cell struc- ture is the all-pervading pathological law—conditions which, as they proceed, give unmistakable evidence of decaying powers, and at length reach a point incommensurate with the continuance of life; and the organism which, in the fulness of its life and vigour, was but the expression of the sum of the life of its individual cells now perishes, and yields up its forces to other laws and other combinations of matter. My original design was to comprise in these lectures the significance of hepatic dropsy, which would have embraced a description of the pathological complications, which are usually associated with cirrhosis, the most frequent form of liver disease, giving rise to dropsy of the belly. But I find, sir, not only will the time allotted to these lectures preclude my entering upon the subject of hepatic dropsy; but I may