The family adviser : greatly enlarged and amended ; to which is prefixed The philosophy of disease, with tables, for the use of students of medicine ; or of gentlemen who wish to become acquainted with the fundamental principles of medicine / by Henry Wilkins.

  • Wilkins, Henry, 1767-1847.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The family adviser : greatly enlarged and amended ; to which is prefixed The philosophy of disease, with tables, for the use of students of medicine ; or of gentlemen who wish to become acquainted with the fundamental principles of medicine / by Henry Wilkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    34/470
    hereafter to be mentioned, more might be done in the metaphysical way. When by the united application of the above means, or whatever part of them was ne- cessary, disease is on a full retreat, the intelligent practitioner does not leave his patient to nature, or a vis medicatrix, he well knows that it will sink, in many cases, as far below the standard of health (in action) as it was above it. He, therefore, meets the coming debility on the road, and exhibits his tonics and restoratives in due time, graduated to the time and case; lest, when the disease is cured, and nature makes a dividend of the remains of strength, there be not enough for every part; and the patient dies of asphixia. This is dying by the hands of the doctor!! And further it may be remarked of organic diseases that have ensued on a general morbid state of the solids; (such as in typhus) that the point of time to support the system after depleting, &c, will be rather in the middle than in the end of the first set of symp- toms. It will be perceived that all the foregoing observa- tions relate to a phlemonic grade, and we must now attend to the indications of cure in the lower grades of genuine disease that are attended with a typhus or gangrenous disposition of parts. In some case this state of an organ will take place without any previous general debility of the whole system; but, in other instances it will be preceded by a general bad habit; generated by improper diet, or by the relaxing influ- ence of the soil or climate. In both cases, however, the organic affection institutes the same series of sym- pathies, and give the low tone to the system. But not- withstanding this latter circumstance, (viz. low tone of system,) the arterial sympathy is relatively active, as it is in the higher grades aforementioned. The indications of cure are then to raise the power of the arterial sympathy, by tonics, to a sanative height that it may [as being the first relieved] extend its the surgeon to the exhilaration of the mind. Only one surgeon being able to officiate, the other being sick. I.