The life-study of patients, or the biographic and multiple biographic method of discovering medical truth / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The life-study of patients, or the biographic and multiple biographic method of discovering medical truth / by George M. Gould. 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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    work. Whatever role the microorganism may play, the “soil” (as always) must be prepared. All rhinologists now admit that some mysterious cause is at work. One great physician writes of colds and influenzas that “ they may be due to microorganisms, or local condi- tions in the air passages, but these maladies, as we now know, both depend to some extent on a special predis- position in the sufferer, having its root in the nervous system, and both leave their stamp on that system and gradually undermine it.” And only biographic clinics show that eyestrain is one of these frequent “special predispositions of the nervous system.” The seemingly illogic incidence of these inflammations of the mucosa in some patients, and the escape of others, is, at least in part, explained by the fact that when the ocular reflex expends itself continuously on one set of organs, espe- cially those of the digestive system, other organs are freed from the attacks. Thus Carlyle, Huxley, Margaret Fuller, and Darwin have no colds, DeQuincey but fbw, Whittier, Lewes, and Browning, more. Wag- ner saw some connection when he wrote, “my catarrh has developed so that I may hope it will rid me of my usual winter illness.” Nietzsche was tormented with colds, hoarseness, etc., all his life, and Mrs. Carlyle and George Eliot seemed never to have been without influ- enza, grippe, sore throat, etc. In private practice the relation of influenza, colds, etc., to eyestrain, has often been noticed. Colds alternating with the other symp- toms, freedom from the one set replacing suffering from the other, has been noticed And colds, also, as a termi- nal affection, i. e., upon the more permanent disappear- ance of other symptoms, are especially noteworthy. George Eliot’s only disease on the day of her death was supposed to be laryngeal sore throat. Lewes also died a day or two after taking cold.” After I had several times noticed the strange mani- festation of peculiar and unaccountable eczemas, rashes, etc., as the terminal stages of ocular headaches and of sickheadaches, I found in the reports of some old physicians a clear statement that “herpetisms” were sometimes reported as the sequels of migraine. Modern authors treating of migraine know nothing about this. Wagner had repeated attacks of a “cutaneous malady,” and “continuous attacks of erysipelas” which tor- mented him much of his life. I remember especially one patient who had most distressing attacks of “ hives,” nnd various other eruptions, pronounced by the best
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