On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![the cyanogen compounds—themselves derivatives of ammonia.* The nominal quantity of ammonia contained in the breath is exceeded in other diseases besides tyiDhus, a circumstance which may account for the s]Dontaneous progressive evolution of typhus fever in unventilated hospitals under circumstances of crowding insufficient to generate it elsewhere ; and also for the observation that a deteriorated state of the constitution predisposes to the development of typhus. From the present state of our knowledge, therefore, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that the disagree- able odour of the cutaneous and pulmonary exhalations of typhus patients, as well as the offensive smell gener- ated by over-crowding are due to one and the same source, namely, some unknown compound of am- monia, f It appears to me, therefore, that like erysipelas and diphtheria, the weight of evidence and of argument is in favour of the occasional de novo origin of typhus fever by progressive developments, through as yet unknown and undetermined concurrent factors in the surroundings of the patient; his environment in the widest sense of the term, and that such de novo origin of these diseases does not exclude the possibihty of their subsequent spread by contagion,]: What is true of fatigue fever and of typhus fever, is equally true as regards typhoid. Mihtary * A Sketch of an hypothesis towards vito-chemical methods in Pathology and Therapeutics, by W. H. Pearse, Esq., M.D.. in Prov. Med. Journal, 1888. t Mui-chison, loc. cit., 116. t, .i i »\^ I The Doctrine of Evolution in its appUcation to Pathology, Dy W. Aitken, M.D., F.E.S., in Glasgow Medical Journal for 1886.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21953181_0054.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
