Preventive treatment of hydrophobia and other diseases : a paper read before the Abernethian Society, Thursday, January 12th, 1888 / by T. Lauder Brunton.

  • Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Preventive treatment of hydrophobia and other diseases : a paper read before the Abernethian Society, Thursday, January 12th, 1888 / by T. Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    in fact, man’s position is very much that of. the earth in regard to the crops as sketched by Kingsley in f Hypatia,’ where Raphael regards the earth as a huge sensitive animal, which is irritated by man scratching its surface with ploughs, and wearying it with crops, until at last its anger finds vent in an explosion, as an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. The effect of crops upon the earth is to exhaust the portion of soil upon which they grow, and the more luxuriant they are the more rapidly do they exhaust it. In some years, from one circumstance or another, the crops are luxuriant, in others they are scanty. If looked at from man’s point of view the scanty crops are disadvan- tageous, from the earth’s point of view they are desirable. When bacilli or micrococci begin to grow in the human organism they exhaust and may destroy the organism, which on its part usually resents their intrusion by an explosion of heat, to which we give the name of fever. Just as the earthquake or volcanic eruption is hurtful to the earth as well as to its inhabitants, so this fever is hurtful both to the organism and to the microbes which have invaded it, but if it is only high enough to kill the microbe without killing the organism it is a most useful means of protection, freeing the organism from its invaders, and preserving its health and vitality. Now, just as there are good years and bad years for crops of wheat, so there are times at which microbes flourish luxuriantly and others at which they grow sparingly. These different times were recognised by the old physicians under the name of the “ epidemic constitution,” for they noticed that sometimes the disease flourished and the patients died, at other times the disease was of a mild form and the patients nearly all recovered. We now explain these different conditions by saying that at some times the microbes grew luxuriantly and destroyed the organisms which they attacked, but at other times the microbes grew sparingly and therefore did not destroy the organism in which they were growing. It is possible that the growth of microbes may be modified by many factors, but there