Practical medicine and medical diagnosis / by Byrom Bramwell.

  • Byrom Bramwell
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical medicine and medical diagnosis / by Byrom Bramwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/164 (page 29)
    PuUrty and early manhood.—At or about the time of puberty in women, hysteria and other convulsive affections are common, and chlorosis is of frequent occurrence. Gonorrhoea and syphilis are fre- quently met with during early manhood. Ulcer of the stomach is com- mon in young women; acute rheumatism is of frequent occurrence at this period of life; phthisis seems to be most prevalent between the ages of 20 and 25. Active manhood—Aneurisms, locomotor ataxia, and the different forms of paraplegia may be instanced as diseases which are most fre- quently met with during this period of life. The numerous affections due to alcoholic excess are also of frequent occurrence. With the cessation of menstruation many functional affections are frequently met with; cancer of the Ireast is very common, and organic diseases of the uterus are frequently observed. Old age.—With the period of decline and old age the many different .conditions which depend upon tissue decay and senile degeneration become prevalent; cerebral hoimorrJiage with resulting he^niplegia, fatty heart, and angina pectoris may be mentioned as typical illustrations. In the second place, certain diseases are much more serious at one period of life than at another. Capillary bronchitis is very fatal both in very young and very old people ; aciote croupous pneumonia, too, is usually fatal in old people. An epileptic convulsion in a child is, on the other hand, not necessarily a grave symptom, for in children it is frequently met with at the commencement of the exanthemata and other affections attended with a sudden rise of temperature, and cor- responds to a rigor in the adult. In the third place, in certain families there are critical periods or times of Hfe at which certain diseases, such as phthisis and Bright's dis- ease, tend to appear, and at which special precautionary measures are therefore necessary. Further, it not unfrequently happens that if the different diseases (young infants, for example, do not as a rule take scarlet fever, al- though they do take small-pox) ; and since one attack is usually preventitive against a second, and smce the majority of individuals are exposed to the poison during child- hood (schools, evening parties, and all places in which children congregate being in many cases the centres of infection), these diseases are more connnon at this than at any other period of life. The smceptibililytopseudo-hypertrophic paralysis, the hmnorrhagic diathesis, andjnr- haps some other diseases which are hereditary, is probably handed down from the mother to the child, the tendency to the disease being born with the individual. In cases of this description, the stronger the tendency, the earlier will the disease be in appearing in any given case, and the earlier the date of appearance the more severely, in all probability, will it be manifested.