Constitutional syphilis : being a practical illustration of the disease in its secondary and tertiary phases / by James George Beaney.

  • James Beaney
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Constitutional syphilis : being a practical illustration of the disease in its secondary and tertiary phases / by James George Beaney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    475/528 (page 459)
    o-ums are tumefied and ulcerated; the tongue is swollen to tuch an extent that it hangs out of the mouth, incapaci- tating the patient from either eating or speaking; the salivary glands are enlarged, most painful and inflamed, and the saliva flows most conspicuously from the mouth. In some instances the gums mortify. . . . I have frequently seen inflammation and ulceration of the mouth, and profuse salivation, induced by only a few grains of calomel, or other mercurial. This is a circumstance which I have more than once noticed, and have been forced to remember. In one instance, a woman, who was in the habit of taking a blue pill when she was constipated and out of order, havmg them at hand, gave her little girl, who was ailing, a third of one under the impression that it would be of service m correcting some disorder of the bowels. Twelve hours after aU the violent symptoms of salivation set in, and nothmg could arrest them. Soon gangrene of the mouth and destruc- tion of the right alveolar process occurred. It must be occuiTences of this kind which led Professor Syme_ to attribute much of the syphilitic phenomena to mercurial- ''^Hk confidence in such conclusions must have been induced by reading such facts as those given by Dr. Graves m the first volume of Clinical Lectures, page 452, vol. L He says:-I stated in my last lecture that the mere fact of a considerable time having elapsed since the patient took mercury is no proof that the symptoms were not mercurial. I have over and over again met with cases of periostitis in persons who had been two, four, six, and even eight years Jhout taking mercury. I was called the other day to a lady whose mouth was sore, and her breath fetid m fact, she presented all the phenomena of mercurial salivation and yet it is now several years since she took mercury, by the