The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs and skin : and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • James Manby Gully
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs and skin : and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    27/478 (page 9)
    flammation of the stomacli, commonly called acute indi- gestion. A man ingests highly-seasoned meats and alcoholic drinks, and begets in the mucous lining of his stomach a patch of such disorder I have minutely described. Novr, tliough tliat disorder is, as regards the patch itself, one of depressed Yital power, it becomes to other parts a som-ce of exalted vital action ; as if the very fact of the existence of a diseased point roused the system to efforts for its rehef—an opinion that was held by Hippoceates, and has prevailed with some of the soundest physicians since his times.* The sympathy thus excited in other organs of the body is in proportion to the amount and kind of nervous matter they contain. Thus, in the case before us, the ganglionic nervous matter of the mucous membrane of the stomach excites the same matter distributed to the heart, whose beats are, in conseciuence, increased in frecjuency and force ; the pulse becomes rapid and hard ; as a residt of this quickened pulse, the breathings also quicken. Then comes the sympathy with the spinal cord and the brain, whose functions are rendered irregular or are oppressed; hence the lassitude of mind and limb, the prostration of strength, the somnolence first, and then the sleeplessness, &c. Then there are the sympathies with the mucous surfaces of all the other organs roused, causing the diminu- tion and vitiation of their secretions ; hence the heaviness and the aching of the forehead, the suffused eyes, the fevered and dry tongue, the thirst, the stoppage of the bile, the constipation of the bowels, the scantiness of the secretion from the kidneys, all of them dependent on. mucous membranes. And as this mucous surface extends to the outer part of tlie body, forming the true skin, the same morbid sympathy extends thither, accompanied with the same diminution and vitiation of sensation and secre- tion : hence the dry and hot skin called feverish heat. In fact, here is a case of what is called simple inllam- matory fever, a general disease traceable to a small point of acute inflammation in the stomach. Sometimes the * IniU'ed, the doctrinr- tliaf, rlisoiiHC—i. e., a scric'i of ininaturiil symp- toms, is constnntly tlie-siffMal of tin; vvliolc body Ijoiii}; excited to save some vital part from dostniction, ol)taliis oonnt<'iinricc from nil tlic facta ihat clo.sc obsorvation of it.s caii.scs, jjroprcss, and tcrniiiiatior] can supply. If .space permitted, it would not be dillicult to apply this doctrine to any possible case of disease.