Copy 1, Volume 1

A treatise on the practice of medicine / By George B. Wood.

  • George Bacon Wood
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the practice of medicine / By George B. Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/824 (page 3)
    * CHAP. I.] DISEASE OF THE FLUIDS. 7 3 extent their Jess complex combinations, forming the proximate ingredients of those numerous associations of morbid states or actions usually called diseases. It may be admitted, as a self-evident proposition, that all diseases have their seat in the fluids or solids of the body, or in both. SECTION I. DISEASE OF THE FLUIDS. Tn relation to the fluids of the body, our pathological knowledge is very deficient. ‘There can be no doubt that all of them are occasionally very unhealthy in their condition; and there can be as little doubt that, in this unhealthy condition, many of them may become the sources of serious dis- ease. But the question is, whether the vitiated state of the fluids is original with them, or whether it arises| from some disorder of the solids by w ‘hich they are generated. During the prevalence of the Humoral Pathology, it was customary to ascribe most complaints to a morbid state of the liquids of the body; and, when this system was overthrown, medical sentiment turned with equal exclusiveness towards the solids. But at present an inter- mediate opinion is gaining ground; and the truth probably is, that, while the greater number of diseases have their origin in derangements either of the functions or structure of the organs, others consist essentially in a dis- ordered state of the liquids, though even these usually find expression in complaints of the fixed structures. As all the fluids, with the exception of the lymph and chyle, are derived from the blood, and as the two former enter directly into the constitution of the latter, and convey into it all the deleterious principles which they may contain, the blood may be considered as the only fluid, subject to original morbid changes, or at least the only one to which we are to look as the primary seat of diseases requiring our attention. ‘The numerous liquid secretions, if deranged at the time of their formation, must be so in conse- quence of the diseased condition of the blood from which they are derived, or of the organs by which they are elaborated; if they become deranged after their formation, as sometimes happens with the bile, urine, and some other secretions, it must be owing to their undue detention, or to some undue influence of surrounding parts upon them, in either of which cases the solids are in fault. 1. There can be no doubt that the blood is very frequently the source of diseases, by serving as a vehicle through which noxious substances are enabled to reach the parts upon which they act. Many poisons prove fatal by entering the circulation through the medium of absorption; and the miasmatic and contagious effluvia probably operate on the system through the same channel. How far they act on the blood itself with which they are mingled, so as to change its constitution, and thus render it directly the seat of disease, is altogether uncertain. It is highly pro- bable that such a change is sometimes effected, and that the noxious agent, after entering the circulation, not only produces a morbid impression on the solids with which it is brought into contact by the blood, but also directly deteriorates the qualities of that fluid, and renders it less capable, or altogether incapable, of performing its due offices in the animal economy. Thus, the injection of putrid animal substances into the veins is followed by a loss of coagulability in the blood, and a tendency to more speedy