A practical treatise on venereal diseases; or, critical and experimental researches on inoculation, applied to the study of these affections : with a therapeutical summary and special formulary / by Ph. Ricord. Translated from the French by A. Sidney Doane.

  • Philippe Ricord
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on venereal diseases; or, critical and experimental researches on inoculation, applied to the study of these affections : with a therapeutical summary and special formulary / by Ph. Ricord. Translated from the French by A. Sidney Doane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (papule muqueuse,) the most characteristic symptom of syphilis, does not, by being introduced under the epidermis or epithelium, produce an inflammation of characteristic form and nature, whilst chancre or primary ulcer alone possesses this property ? According to the passage above quoted, Messrs. Cullerier and Ratier declare that inoculation is necessarily the true means of diagnosis, and that we may distinguish, by the trial of its pus, between an ulcer resulting from the inoculation of the chancre, and any lesion whick may in certain cases be produced by other pus, tried in the same manner; nowis not that which they consider as a means of diagnosis, and to which they appeal in case of chancre, inoculated with a lancet from the pus of a primary and therefore inoculable ulcer, consequently also probatory for the latter ? Hence, according to the opponents of inoculation, must we not admit that when the pus of an ulcer produces certain symptoms constant in their form and development, and which present certain characteristic conditions, the ulcer, whose pus has been inoculated, was a chancre, and consequently that the necessaty character, with- out which an ulcer cannot be called chancre, is to furnish a pus capable of being inoculated under the given conditions ? _ As to the uncertainty of the results obtained by inoculation, and the consequences to be drawn from them, I reply, that no conclu- sions can be drawn from experiments badly performed or observed ; and that if these authors were prompted by the interest of science in their experiments, the same interest and the welfare of humanity induced me to verify their labors, add new facts, and rectify gross errors. To most persons, who will examine with unprejudiced minds, it must be clear from the study of the phenomena of general contagion, and, as I have before said, from the constant and regular connexions between cause and effect, that the syphilitic diseases are ascribable to a specific agent or deleterious principle, which is only to be con- sidered an entity in the same degree as the peculiar principle of hydrophobia, the venom of the viper, the specific cause of the small] pox, &c. &c. &c. It will then be evident that those who will search for this cause, ascertain its effects, and endeavor to neutral- ize its principle, or its consequences, will, I think, deserve some encouragement, and they will be able to retort upon their antago-
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