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.

    50/142 (page 42)
    symptoms, the local inflammation must have its course. The poison of varicella (chicken pox) brings out vesi- cular pimples like the mercurial rash which disappear spontaneously. The effect of the poison of some kinds of shell fish will be head-ache, prostration of strength, nausea, restless- ness followed by a swelling of the face with bright red- ness and itchiness of the skin, phenomena similar to those produced by the morbid poison of scarlatina, We must in every one of these cases refer to the nerves as the - proximate cause acting on the vessels, as in some the eruption subsides rapidly, leaving no trace of alteration of structure, and the itchiness or pain show that it is the nerves which are affected primarily if not solely. We cannot decide when shell fish or acidity in the stomach produces nettle rash, whether there is actually some- thing circulated to the areola of the skin to cause the capillaries to give way and swell, or whether the effect _ be produced merely by the nerves of the skin being continuous with those of the stomach, analogy would lead us to conclude that there was something circulated which poisoned the nerves of the spots, a similar effect being produced on a part by the sting of a wasp, ora nettle, or the bite of a gnat, all which introduce a poison; for the puncture of a clean thorn or needle does . not occasion the weals, hence I think the ExANTHE- MATA are produced by poisonous eflluvia absorbed and circulated. Nervous influence is elicited in producing nervous — actions such as perceptions or thoughts, organic actions such as those of capillaries, heart or intestines, or the - combination of nervous and organic action voluntary