The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    part, consecpient on the retention of the blood in the exhausted and relaxed vessels, the vital chemistry being, for the time, improperly carried on. These phases apply to all acutely diseased jiarts what- ever—from the small pimple on the skin to the most intense inflammation of the lungs or brain. In all, the same stages occur, whatever the exciting cause may be; whether it be the atom of dirt irritating the follicle of the skin, and producing the pimple there, or the rush of cold air into the lungs, irritating their mucous membrane, and drawing excessive blood into it. From what precedes, it appears that the intimate vital condition of a part in acute disease is one of debility. The blood-vessels have lost their contractile energy, and are oppressed with blood which they lack the power to throw off. But we must not, meanwhile, lose sight of the fact, that the organic nerves themselves, whose re-action on excessive stimulus has produced all this mischief, are also supplied with and nourished by blood-vessels; and that therefore they, too, are in a state implying diseased sensa- tion and nutrition. In other words, they are exquisitely irritable, but their irritability is of a diseased quality, and not sustained, because they are badly nourished by the blood; the result of which is more than ordinary sensi- tiveness to the causes which first induced the disease, or to any stimulus whatever applied to the part. Feeble con- traction takes place, then more exhaustion; contraction again, and so until all power is lost. Thus a man gets a slight inflammation of the mucous lining of the wind- pipe from breathing very cold air; allows the same cause to exasperate it daily by acting on the highly irritable but feeble nerves and blood-vessels of the membrane; and, finally, induces the most intense form of inflammation of the lungs—a too frequent illustration of the fa(;t, that the most fatal maladies commence in a “ slight cold.” Having thus established the fact, that acute disease of an organ im])lies extreme debility, morbid irritability, and congestion of its blood-vessels and organic nerves, we may now_ revert to the proposition, that all so-called general disease originates in some local disorder—a pro- position that will best be developed by tracing the physical liistory of such a local condition as I have above described. And we will take the local inflammation of an organ whose sympathies are the most extensive—acute mucous