First principles of medicine / By Archibald Billing.

  • Archibald Billing
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    their nervous energy, as the kidneys, skin, and, intes- tines, but above all the kidneys and skin, and when they cease to secrete the redundant fluid oozes from the overloaded capillaries, not merely overloaded, but weak- ened, in consequence of the deteriorated state of the nervous system, and unless we can restore energy to the nervous system, so as to give tone to the exhalant capil- laries, we in vain evacuate the fluid eitber by tapping, or by diuretics, or cathartics such as Elaterium. Thus Dropsy is not to be considered as an isolated or single disease, except when, for a time, to prevent a patient from being overwhelmed by the fluid in the cavities, we turn our whole attention to getting rid of it, either by tapping, or profuse evacuation, as by .ydra- gegue purgatives, or diuretics, and other medicines. When we see a patient with dropsical swellings, our great object must be to cure the disease which produced the symptom of dropsy, dropsy being but a symptom. Itis true some cure both by attending to the one symptom alone, as when dropsy is the consequence of inflammatory disease of the lungs, pericardium, or liver, in which squills and digitalis are employed specificially as diuretics, with purgatives, to evacuate the fluid by the kidneys and bowels, and some form of mercury at the same time empyrically ; although the whole attention is given to the symptom of dropsy, yet the treatment is also applicable to the local affection; and in sucha case, often the primary and secondary disease are cured together ; and referring to local inflammation as the root of some dropsies, we can understand how in many cases, the abstraction of blood becomes a most usefal assistant