A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by the late John Hunter.

  • John Hunter
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds / by the late John Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    with another, in a manner similar to the incompatibility between different actions, though not of so strict a kind. A man may have the lues and the small-pox at the same time; that is, parts of his body may be contaminat- ed by the venereal poison; the small-pox may at the same time take place, and both diseases may appear together, but still not in the same part. In two eruptive diseases, where both are necessarily the consequence of fever, and where both naturally ap- pear after the fever, nearly at the same distance of time, it would be impossible for the two to have their respec- tive eruptions, even in different parts, because it is im- possible that the two preceding fevers should be coexis- tent. From this principle I think I may fairly put the fol- lowing queries:—Does not the failure of inoculation, and the power of resisting many infections, arise frwm the existence of some other disease at that time in the body, which is therefore incapable of another action ? Does not the great difference in the time, from the ap- plication of the cause to the appearance of the disease, in many cases, depend upon the same principle? For instance, a person is inoculated, and the puncture does not inflame for fourteen days, cases of which I have seen; is not this deviation from the natural progress of the disease to be attributed to another disease in the con- stitution at the time of inoculation? Does not the cure of some diseases depend upon the same principle as the suspension or cure of a gonor- rhoea by a fever?