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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    intestine. From the former, the food and mucous secretion is poured out through the ulcerated orifice, and from the latter, the mucus and fseces. Sometimes volumes of air escape from the bowels into the same cavity, or are secreted in it; but this is not necessarily fatal. In the lungs, chronic irritation, especially if accom- ]:anied with asthmatic breathing, sometimes ends in per- foration of the sides of the air tubes and vesicles, and the escape of air into one of the cavities of the pleura, the consequence of which is, continually increasing oppression of breathing, the air outside of the lungs XJressing upon them so as to prevent their expansion, and this goes on to suffocation. In these various terminations of chronic disorder we have the exemplification of the fact insisted on in tliese pages, that “death comes only by the viscera and that, as the disorder of those organs, in their character of centres of nutritive activity, maintains chronic disorder in other ])arts, by maintaining nutritive disturbance there, so, when their ovm chronic disease terminates fatally, it is by arresting their own nutrition and, ij^so facto, that of all parts of the economy. It is reasonable to suppose that the same central nutritive organs which have for years kept up morbid sympathies all over the frame, should, when worn out of their nutritive energy, draw all other liarts with them into extinction. Gout in the foot never kills, but gout in the stomach does; and why 1 Because so long as the irritation of the digestive organs, which is the essential of gout, is thrown upon the foot, those organs are safe. But when they have no longer energy to do this, the disease oppresses and arrests tlieii' nutrition, and all is darkness and destruction for the rest of the body. Truly, these viscera, and these visceral ganglionic nerves, deserve more notice and better usage than they generally get! And they should always be thought of in conjunc- tion. It is because the “stomach and bowels” are in view, and not the myriads of exquisitely sensitive nerves which endue them with life, that such monstrous medicinal extravagances are practised on them for months together as to astound one at the reckless courage that prescribed them. One stands aghast at some of them ! So much for the fatal terminations of chronic disorder, to which it is most ordinarily driven by the irrational system of meddling with every sjunptom, great or small,