The nature, symptoms and treatment of consumption / by Richard Payne Cotton.

  • Richard Payne Cotton
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature, symptoms and treatment of consumption / by Richard Payne Cotton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/344 (page 1)
    INTRODUCTION. It is probable that Consumption was one of the earliest maladies which visited the human race : it was well known to the physicians of ancient Greece and Eome, and since their days has continued one of the most destructive weapons of the Almighty. All diseases attended by emaciation were divided by the early fathers of medicine into three classes, which they termed respectively, Atrophy, Cachexy, and Phthisis, but it was only in the last of these that the lungs were said to be implicated; and it is no little tribute to their skill and discernment, that, in these modern days, the same terms and dis- tinctions should be revived. Physicians of succeed- ing years, neglecting the teaching of their profes- sional forefathers, were in the habit of using the word phthisis or consumption, as a means of con- veniently explaining away many chronic cases, the B