Volume 1

The internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous.

  • Charles E. de M. Sajous
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The internal secretions and the principles of medicine / by Charles E. de M. Sajous. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/884 page 9
    the effect of a remedy, the nature of a symptom, or any, in fact, of the many phenomena which to us practitioners are of para¬ mount importance in diagnosis or therapeutics, was it possible to trace to its source the chain of events through which a normal function had more or less suddenly become abnormal. Invariably was it found that either the physiologists had failed altogether to discern the nature of that function, or, if an attempt had been made by them to explain it, that it was laden with so many inconsistent and obviously mutually contradictory conclusions that—although perhaps quite scientific in their eyes—it was more misleading than helpful in the explanation of the morbid condition analyzed. To illustrate these statements, I will submit a few of the more salient deficiencies referred to. The process of respira¬ tion, which includes pulmonary respiration and oxygenation of the blood and tissues, at once asserts itself as of capital impor¬ tance, since it involves the functions of all organs, the vital process, and also every morbid process. In January, 1903, I urged that this function as taught by physiologists failed to satisfy our needs, and suggested new paths for research. Two years later, Professor Chas. E. Barnes, of the botanical de¬ partment of the University of Chicago,4 wrote: “I found it needful to examine the recent literature of respiration in ani¬ mals, the aspect of the general subject with wdiich I felt myself least familiar. I found to my great surprise, that animal physiologists have concerned themselves very little with the essential problems of respiration.” Then, naming our best- known text-books on physiology, he added: “I found no treat¬ ment whatever, indeed, no mention whatever, of the real prob¬ lems of respiration, that is, of what is happening in the tissues, the process of which these external phenomena are the sign/’ The late Sir Michael Foster5 also closed a study on metabolism in the last edition of his text-book with the statement that, after all, it “consists mostly of guesses and gaps.” Even the apparently simple process through which the blood acquires its oxygen from the air in the pulmonary alveoli is at present unknown to physiologists, their gasometric experiments being, 4 C. R. Barnes: Science, Feb. 17. 1905. 5 Sir Michael Foster: cited by W. G. Little: Liverpool Med.-Chir. Jour., Jan., 1905.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3