On slight ailments : and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale.
- Lionel Smith Beale
- Date:
- MDCCCXCVI [1896]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On slight ailments : and on treating disease / by Lionel S. Beale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
387/404 page 373
![with various slight derangements of health has been frequently noticed. Perhaps it is to be explained by the existence in particular individuals of a highly sensitive and exceptionally active state of those nerve-fibres and that part of the nerve system which is intimately connected with the healthy action of the circulating and digestive systems. In some persons these nerves respond to the slightest stimulus, and the least departure from the ordinary state at once occasions inconvenience or discomfort; while in others, considerable variation, as regards temperature, quality and quantity of food, will make little or no im- pression, and will occasion no immediate disturbance oi derangement. But, in the latter case, pathological changes may take place, and may result in grave structural change, without the patient having experienced the least discomfort, or even being made aware that any departure from the healthy condition had occurred in his system before the supervention of the serious illness which you are asked to investigate and treat. Per- haps, in some such manner, we may account for the fact that certain individuals are suddenly struck down by terrible disease while they seem to be in good health, and others, who never feel well, or look well, reach old age without experiencing one single attack of any illness sufficiently serious to endanger life. Such persons, it must be noted, are often obliged to be very careful, as regards diet, and the feeling of tiredness after great exertion is in them so severe that it must be yielded to. Thus they are forced to take rest before any damage whatever has been done to their organs. Is it not probable that careful attention to the process of excretion, as well as to the quality and quantity of food that is taken, brings about and preserves a state of blood in which disease germs, instead of growing and multiplying, would die? How many ailments may be prevented by judicious starving, or by living for a day or two now and then on low diet ? How thoroughly may not the blood be depurated by a sharp purge given, perhaps, just before blood or liquor sanguinis was about to escape from the vessels, to be poured, perhaps, into the air-cells of the lung ? Might not the purgation be fairly considered to have prevented an impending attack of acute Pneumonia or Inflam- mation of the Lungs, and thus to have really “cut short” the disease? May not moderate doses of Bicarbonate of Potash or Soda, taken in solu- tion twice or three times daily for a week or two, avert an attack of acute rheumatism ? Will not a small dose of certain preparations of Mercury, now and then, prevent attacks of gout or rheumatism or sick headache or dyspepsia or biliousness ? Is it not reasonable to conclude that certain salts by their action on the bowels and kidneys, by promoting free elimination, establish a general state of the tissues which may for the time prevent the occurrence of certain morbid changes of serious con- se(]uence ?](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21303654_0387.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
