The deformities of the fingers and toes / by William Anderson.

  • Anderson, William, 1842-1900.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The deformities of the fingers and toes / by William Anderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the rest all regarded themselves as moderate drinkers—an elastic term. There was, however, nothing in their general condition to indicate that alcoholism had exercised any material influence in favouring the palmar lesion. Race and climate.—We have at present no statistics with regard to the effects of race and climate upon the disease ; but so far as we are at present informed it must be rare, if not altogether absent, in certain countries. During my own residence of six years in Japan I did not meet with a single instance ; and the far larger experi- ence of my friend Surgeon-General Takaki has been equally negative as to this particular affection. My friend Surgeon-Colonel Owen tells me that in an extensive experience amongst the natives of Bengal, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, he does not recollect more than one or two cases, and that these may have been traumatic. At any rate, the condition is extremely rare. Inheritance.—There is unquestionably a strong predisposition to the disease in certain individuals and families, and so many examples of hereditary transmission of the tendency have been related that it is useless to add further to the list. We can no more explain the cause of this special predisposition than we can account for the idio- syncrasy which renders certain persons inordinately liable to erysipelas and some other affections ; and although Dupuytren's contraction is often asso-