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.

    39/164 (page 31)
    liver), syphilis and gonorrhoea are much more common in the male sex. There are, too, many different affections which belong to particular trades or occupations which are met with in one sex more than in the other. The worries and anxiety of business, for example, fall chiefly on men, who are fortunately, however, more fitted both by habit and organisation to cope with mental strain of this description. In some cases, such as pseudo-hypertrophic paralysis and the htemorrhagic dia- thesis diseases, which chiefly affect the male sex (but which are chiefly transmitted through the female), and exophthalmic goitre, which is chiefly met with in females, it is difficult or, in the present state of our knowledge, impossible to give any satisfactory explanation of the fact that one sex is more liable to be affected than the other. Married or Single.—This is not, as a rule, a point of great im- portance. Married men are for the most part steadier than single men, and less liable, therefore, to suffer from syphilis, gonorrhoea, and the baneful effects of alcoholic excess. It is needless to say that this is a very general rule. Married women run some risks during preg- nancy and parturition, more especially during the first labour. Some organic uterine diseases, such as endometritis and epithelioma of the OS uteri and displacements, are more common in married women; imaginary derangements in the unmarried. In the case of women who have borne children, the number of pregnancies or miscarriages, and the condition of the children (whether healthy or otherwise) should always be specified, for the condition of the child not unfrequently throws some light upon the health history of the parent. The marks of hereditary syphilis in the child, for instance, may indicate the true nature of some oliscure disorder of the father or mother. Occupation.—The occupation of the patient is, in jnany cases, a point of the greatest practical importance. In the first place, it may be stated as a general rule, to which, however, there are numerous excep- tions, that an indoor sedentary life is less healthy than an outdoor, active one. Persons living in towns and following indoor occupations are more liable, other things being equal, to suffer from dyspepsia, scrofula, phthisis, malaise, etc. But it must be remembered that liersons living in the country and breathing the purest and freshest air during the day, are often badly situated in other respects ; too often the ventilation of their sleeping apartments is most inadequate; in some districts they are in the habit of shutting themselves up in box- beds, with, it is needless to say, the result that all tlie advantages