Selected monographs.

Date:: 1888

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Selected monographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

237/440 (page 219)

ill the animal kingdom, might be more readily admitted; hut that they are one and the same species, numerous well- established facts seem most clearly to disprove. If asked to describe shortly the pathology of typhus I might sum it up in these words—general congestion, no prominent local disease—a congestion so general and so excessive as is rarely, if ever, met with in typhoid fever or any other disease—• a congestion singled out by most authors as one of its leading characteristics—a congestion that is evident, during life, by the livid skin and petechial eruption, and is found, after death, to have affected more or less every organ in the animal economy—a congestion so constant as to be often passed over as almost valueless, but which future researches may prove to be the grand peculiarity of typhus ; and which, in common with many other considerations, directs attention to the blood as the essential seat of the disease. If required, on the other hand, to give a brief account of the pathology of typhoid fever, I should be inclined to sum it up in these words—prominent local lesion, comparatively little general congestion. VI. From the treatment of the two diseases we can infer but little. The interesting discussions held'at various times oh the subject in the Academie de Medecine,^ strikingly show the discordance of sentiment that prevails in France on the treatment of dothinenteritis. One upholds the pur- gative system as the best and the only proper one, another condemns it as fraught with the greatest danger; one insists that the rational method, which consists in combating sym- ptoms as they arise, is the only rational one, but another condemns it as most irrational, because it kills one in three ; one strongly recommends the frequent use of the lancet, according to his formula, even in advanced stages of the disease; while another, condemning not only the lancet, but all treatment whatever, advocates a method in the purest sense expectant, and unlimited faith in the workings of nature, any attempt to interfere with them being attended with evil results. And every one has facts on his side. ' See more particularly those on Delarroque's Memoirs in the ' Bulletins de l'Acad6mie • for March 14th, 21st, and 28th, and April 4th and nth, 183/. Also Bouillaud's statements at vol. i, p. 250.