A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with copious additions, by Philip Ricord ; translated and edited, with notes, by Freeman J. Bumstead.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1859
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the venereal disease / by John Hunter ; with copious additions, by Philip Ricord ; translated and edited, with notes, by Freeman J. Bumstead. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![didymis, and that they consisted in simple cases of an effusion of plastic lymph, as Sir Astley Cooper has so well shown, together with com- pression or more or less complete obliteration of the vasa seminifera; but in every case the normal elasticity of the organ was entirely lost. MM. Gaussail, Rochoux, Velpeau, etc., have lately presented facts in pathological anatomy similar to those which I have collected, but with explanations systematically different.—Ricord.] § 11. Of the Swellings of the Glands from Symjiathy. Since our knowledge of the manner in which substances get into the circulation, and our having learned that many substances, espe- cially poisons, in their course to the circulation, irritate the absorbent glands to inflammation and tumefaction, we might naturally suppose such swellings, accompanying complaints in the urethra attended with a discharge, to be owing to the absorption of that matter, and there- fore, if it be a venereal discharge, that they must also be venereal. But we must not be too hasty in drawing this conclusion, for we know that the glands will sometimes swell from an irritation at the origin of the lymphatics, where no absorption could possibly have taken place. They often swell and become painful upon the commencement of in- flammation, before* any suppuration has taken place, and subside upon the coming on of suppuration, because when the suppuration begins, the inflammation abates. I have known a prick in the finger with a clean sewing-needle produce a red streak all up the forearm, pain along the inside of the biceps muscle, a swelling of the lymphatic gland above the inner condyle of the humerus, and also of the glands of the armpit, immediately followed by sickness and a rigor, all which, however, have soon gone off. As it should therefore appear that the absorbent system is capable of being affected as well by irritation as by the absorption of matter, in all diseases of this system arising from local injuries attended with matter, one must always have these two causes in view, and endeavor, if possible, to distinguish from which the present affection proceeds. For in those cases arising from an ir- ritated surface in consequence of poison, especially the venereal, it is of considerable consequence to be able to say from which of the two it arises, since it sometimes happens, although but seldom, that the glands of the groin are affected in a common gonorrhoea with the ap- pearance of beginning buboes, but which I suspect to be similar to the swelling of the testicle, that is, merely sympathetic. The pain they give is but very trifling, when compared to that of the true vene- real swellings arising from the absorption of matter, and they seldom suppurate. However3 there are swellings of these glands from actual absorption of matter in gonorrhoea, and which consequently are truly venereal; and as it is possible to have such, they are always to be suspected. As they have sometimes arisen upon a cessation of the irritation in the urethra, similar to the swelling of the testicle, it has been supposed that the matter was driven, as it were, into them by unskilful treatment. From our acquaintance with the absorbing system we know that the matter can go that way; but we also know that we 7](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21131521_0085.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
