Volume 2

Elements of the theory and practice of physic, designed for the use of students / By George Gregory.

  • George Gregory
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of the theory and practice of physic, designed for the use of students / By George Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/572 (page 8)
    i Pe oh ‘ esl ih f i an : PY a So 8 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. Teas q 1 i * i cM ye é diseases by considering them separately and piecemea],—that is to say, as exclusively general or local, external or internal, acute or chronic.* | ee | Every. physician of experience will subscribe to the author’s’ criticisms on those epithets, but he might have been more particular. Chronic inflammatory diseases are more numerous than is generally admitted, and are frequently unsuc- . cessfully treated, for want of sufficient depletion, particularly by the lancet. The There are many. cases of this description, which by long continuance may require the loss of more blood to subdue inflammation, which sometimes becomes habitual, than the acute affection of the same parts, in which you may puta period to the disease in a much shorter time, by more ‘copious evacuations at first. The more acute, if they do not terminate by resolution, end in disorganization; the chronic inflammatory affections more frequently end in secretions. Although there are many shades in inflammations and fevers, we cannot suppose there can be so much difference in their pathology, as in the quantity of disease. P. The general character of chronic diseases may be viewed as the reverse of that which distinguishes diseases of an acute kind. Throughout the latter a considerable similarity of pathology will have been observed to prevail. There is a remarkable uniformity also in their symptoms and periods. They run) their course in a short time—often in a defined time. In all of them may be traced a disposition to terminate in the recovery of health. Medicine exerts over the greater number of them a very obvious power; and the principles of their treatment may, in most instances, be considered as tolerably well ascertained. eis ins ' Chronic diseases, on the other hand, are very tedious: some of them may even be, present in one shape or another during the — whole course of life. In their progress, they are very irregular. The protean forms which they assume ‘not only perplex the prac- titioner, but oppose, at the same time, the most serious obstacles to their accurate description.~ “Though not commonly, or necessarily, accompanied by fever, yet feverish symptoms may arise in all of them, at any period of their course. Much obscurity pervades their pathology. The reasonings concerning some of them do not readily assimilate with the views entertained of other disorders. Lastly, the principles of treatment in chronic diseases are neither uhiform nor well understood. In many instances, they are wholly , unknown; but were they even better ascertained, it is doubtful how far the physician could avail himself of such knowledge. In the cure of chronic diseases, indeed, neither fortune nor art avail him much, It is seldom that he observes in them any disposition to & / * The ancients called those diseases acute, which being seated chiefly in, and attended with a rapid ebullition of, the fluids, run their course quickly. ‘On the other hand, they call such diseases chronic, as proceed from a vitiated condition of the solids of the body, or from preternatural grossness of the fluids, on which account they either move very slowly towards concoction, or else never, reach it,— , See Baglivi de Praxi Medica, lib. ii. cup. 1. %