Volume 2
The London medical dictionary; including under distinct heads every branch of medicine ... with whatever relates to medicine in natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history / By Bartholomew Parr.
- Bartholomew Parr
- Date:
- 1809
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The London medical dictionary; including under distinct heads every branch of medicine ... with whatever relates to medicine in natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history / By Bartholomew Parr. Source: Wellcome Collection.
750/760 page 740
![Y Y A W Y ABA'CANI. SeeApiNEr. y AM._ An esculent root, procured from tliree species of dioscorea, viz. d. alata, bulbifera, and sativa Lin. Sp. PI. 1402, M63; farinaceous, and wlien dry easily preserved. The colour, size, and weight greatly vary, but the quality does not differ. YAWS. Frambasia] placed by Dr. Cullen with the impetigines, without any definition, though he men- tions two varieties, that of Guinea and America. It is apparently endemial in Guinea, and carried by the negroes to America. Whether there is any foundation for supposing the disease to be different on the coast of Africa and in America we greatly doubt. The appearances are nearly the same, though the disease of St. Domingo is said to appear first on the leg, a variety seemingly oflitde im- portance. The subsequent eruptions do not differ. The disease is said to attack but once in the life, to be at- tended with specific fever, and to have itiwegular in- crease, state, and declension (Ludford DisTertatio In- auguralis); and therefore to be more nearly allied to the exanthemata than the impetigines. 'The first symptom of the disease is a shivering, fol- lowed by a slow fever, often unobserved. I'he lassitude, however, want of appetite, pains in the head and loins, so great as to prevent sleep, force themselves on obser- vation. The skin then begins to swell, the sure pre- cursor of an eruption. When the disease advances more slowly, it appears by obstinate ulcers, which while open seem to preserve the patient from the erup- tions, for the latter appear on healing them. They begin with little spots, like the prick of a pin, and ex- tend around till they rise in pimples. The epidermis then separates, discovering a white spot, under which a fungous excrescence forms of different sizes, from a small strawberry to a mulberry. During their growth the hairs become white and transparent. It is singular that this endemic disease of Africa should not have been known to the ancients; but their descriptions, though animated, and often clear, are not always discriminated. We find, however, a similar disease in the Molucca islands (Bomius Methodus Me- dendi in Indiis), and we think in the sibbens in Scotland (Adams on Morbid Poisons, p. 17C, and 1(,0); nor is it im,.-robable that Galen and Discorides mention it under the name of terminthus, lereminthus, and tere- binthus (Galen in lib. vi ; fiippocralis be Morbis vul- Y A W garibus, Malhiolus in Dioscoridem, lib. i. 108). Severt- nus (de Recondita Abscessum Natura) has traced its ap- pearance in succeeding authors, with a greater or less degr ee of probability, in which we need not follow him. The disease generally attacks the poor, those badly fed, and worn down by distress and labour. The ulcer appears always of a malignant kind, extending insensi- bly, and resisting the most active remedies. The ex- crescences resemble the berries of the Phoenician cedar, at first green, and verging by degrees to a greenish black, or a deep violet, like the berries of the juniper. The eruptions proceed slowly, scarcely making any re- markable progress in many weeks. When they follow their usual route, they appear first in the axillae, anus, and around the genital organs, particularly in the face and neck, where they become larger than in any other part. After the eruption, the fever lessens, the ap- petite returns, and every inconvenience appears to vanish. The patient is apparently cured, excepting the pustules, which give little pain, if not exposed to ex- ternal violence. In this deceitful interval of rest the disease seems to ac([uire fresh strength internally. The pustules increase and throw out a sanious, at least a corrosive, matter, and one of the earliest crops, styled the mother yaxo, be- comes a malignant spreading ulcer, which destroys all the surrounding parts, not excepting the bones; and medicines which are, in slighter degrees of the disease, salutary, seem only to increase the voracity of this monster. The excrescences are more rapid in their ap- pearance in proportion to the degree of fever and the strength of the constitution, and the disease in conse- quence milder. Those who are weak and relaxed .soon fall in(o> cachexy and ascites; the stronger habits sink in an atrophy. Tlie last stages of the disease are horrible. The heads of tlie bones are consumed by carious ex- ostoses, the pains excruciating, the debility extreme, and so dreadful is the state, that an incurable palsy, in one part, is esteemed a desirable crisis It is ^id, if curqd, never again to attack the same person. The eruption is usually completed in three months; but in the best circumstances the cure is seldom finished within the year. The disease is infectious, and fre- quently communicated in the commerce of the sexe.s, or by sucking. The semii.ium is, in the former way, communicated to the foetus.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22007982_0001_0750.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
