Observations on the causes and treatment of ulcerous diseases of the leg / by J.C. Spender.

Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the causes and treatment of ulcerous diseases of the leg / by J.C. Spender. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tlie absurd conclusion, that the tendency of the structures is to evil. Without, however, insisting on this, the daily occurrence of facts affords a sufficient refutation of the opinions now under review. One individual has a spontaneous ulcer on his extremity, but for every such instance perhaps twenty others never experience a similar sore during the whole of their lives. Two persons, of the same age, and of the same general health, shall receive a kick or blow of the same severity on the same part of their legs—in the one case, the injury will get well of itself, or even in opposition to injudicious treatment; whilst in the other, the greatest care and attention to the mere local accident will not prevent it from running into a troublesome sore. Now the legs of all these four classes of individuals are equally dependent and equally distant from the centre of the circulation, and, consequently, if one or both of these states rendered them liable to the evil, the eflfects ought to be the same in each case. It is plain, therefore, that we must search for some other cause to explain the fact to be accounted for; and this, in a great majority of the worst instances, as I shall soon attempt to prove, appears to aiise from the existence of a positive and palpable unhealthi- ness of the superficial structures of the limb. But although, as I shall almost immediately endeavour to show, it is the presence of such abso-
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