The practitioner's handbook of treatment, or, The principles of therapeutics / by J. Milner Fothergill.

  • Fothergill, J. Milner.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practitioner's handbook of treatment, or, The principles of therapeutics / by J. Milner Fothergill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    I hitherto shrouded in mystery; Avhile in the recognition of certain internal affections it is simply invaluable. Such are some of the important steps recently taken in that division Imown as t he science of medicine. In the art of medicine vast strides are being made daily in the direction of diagnosis. In the field of bacteriology various methods of investigation have been established on a, sound scientific footing for purely diagnostic purposes. The injection of mallein into a horse that has been exposed to the infection of glanders will show whether or not the animal has contracted the disease. This mallein is prepared in the same way as Koch's tuberculin, and consists of the chemical products in the artificial cultures of the glanders bacilli. Then again the biological test of culture outside the body shows us when a sore-throat is due to the specific invasion of the diphtheria bacillus. Another important step is the •detection of enteric fever by means of certain qualities acquired by the blood of a patient suffering from this malady. There is no more difficult problem in the whole range of practical medicine than to decide as to the presence of typhoid fever in certain obscure and atypical forms. Now, any doubt can be at once removed by the simple expedient of exposing living bacilli typhosi to the blood serum of the affected person and examining a drop-culture thus obtained under the microscope. If the serum be drawn from a patient suffering from enteric fever, sometimes as early as the fifth, and always on the seventh, day, a remarkable series of phenomena results. The main facts that characterize the test are a slight change of shape, and a loss of mobility on the part of the bacilli, and their running together into clusters or clumps. As our instruments of precision have become more numerous, as well as more exact and trustworthy, we have insensibly come to regard the information thus furnished to us as of primary importance ] until the information derived from a careful collection of rational symptoms, from a cautious consideration of the general condition, has been awarded a subordinate position. In fact, we attach an exaggerated importance to one series of facts, and under-estimate the value of others. At present physical signs preponderate in the