Lectures on the ordinary agents of life : as applicable to therapeutics and hygiene, or, the uses of the atmosphere, habitations, baths, clothing, climate, exercise, foods, drinks, &c. in the treatment and prevention of disease / by Alexander Kilgour, M.D.

  • Kilgour, Alexander, 1803-1874.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the ordinary agents of life : as applicable to therapeutics and hygiene, or, the uses of the atmosphere, habitations, baths, clothing, climate, exercise, foods, drinks, &c. in the treatment and prevention of disease / by Alexander Kilgour, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    into medicine under the name of anti-ajihrodisiacs which did not owe their reputation to sheer fancy or whim, are found amongst the olera. The action of the testicles in a great degree depends upon the animal heat, and whatever diminishes this, diminishes the secretion of semen. A ducking in the horse pond is the old cure for lechery, and a dish of salads is only a milder prescription of the same nature applied through the stomach. From the want of energy in the vascular system, from the abundance of watery humours, and from the bulky but lax state of the solids— une sorte degonjlement atonique, as the French describe it—there is the appearance of strength to the inexperienced eye that believes bulk to be the criterion of physical power, but the physician and the fancy man at once know that these are the flabby and weak muscles that cannot endure fatigue nor return blow for blow—putting out of view a return with interest. Animals which are fed entirely on pasture, become feeble, lazy, and unable to sustain labour. Their organic tissue becomes soft, humid, and relaxed. The sensations and intellectual faculties correspond with the state of the body. The senses are sluggish and inactive, and the impressions are faint and indistinct. The intellectual powers are oppressed. The system is in that state which pre- disposes to typhus, to nervous fevers, to the cachectic diseases, and especially scrofula in its most distressing varieties. De- bilitutem quandam corpori inducunt, and dropsy is a frequent attendant of this food. In the famine which occur- red in some parts of France in 1817; the inhabitants were reduced to subsist entirely upon potatoes, oat bread, and bran bread ; and when these got done, during the months of April, May, and June, they lived on goat's beard, wild sorrel, nettle, succory, stalks of beans and pease, and buds of young trees. The result of this was, the disappearance of all usual diseases ; but many of the inhabitants died of mere inanition, and all were more or less affected with dropsy. This dropsical