First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
1831
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    113/142 page 105
    place, the spasms of tic doloreux, epilepsy from fright, &c., tetanus from wounds or cold, hydrophobia, deli- rium tremens, &c. Now I am induced to consider the proximate cause of these affections an opposite state of the brain and nervous system to that of fever; irritation from over contraction of the capillaries and the coma which occurs not that of plethora but inanition, convulsions occur in animals bled to death, tetanus from cold, epilepsy from fear, delirium tremens from deficiency of stimulus, hysteria increased by debility, &c. &c. In mere local irritation the pain is commonly great in proportion to the perceptible alteration of structure, as in painful affections of the stomach, uterus, gall bladder, colon, &c.; whereas many serious and des- tructivé inflammations combined with fever give but little pain, the degree of constitutional or general irri- tation is not always proportioned to the local pain, or inflammation, but often much greater; nor has it been hitherto explained why one gun shot wound ofa limb should produce fever, and an apparently exactly similar one lock-jaw; fever and irritation are by no means necessarily connected; on the contrary though conti- nued severe constitutional irritation may be accom- panied by febrile excitement of skin and pulse, we must be cautious in depleting, as depletion increases the irri- tability of the nervous system, and this in some of the irritative diseases a difficult point to discriminate in practice, when an organ of importance appears to be implicated, as hysteria simulating peritonitis, pericar- ditis, pleuritis, or phrenitis. We must not however underrate the consequence of irritation though it be not Oo
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