Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases, and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes. And on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy / by T. Forster.

  • Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrations of the atmospherical origin of epidemic diseases, and of its relation to their predisponent constitutional causes. And on the twofold means of prevention, mitigation, and cure, and of the powerful influence of change of air as a prinicpal remedy / by T. Forster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    different persons, why similar disorders induced in the organs of digestion by the very same cause, should at different times, and on different constitutions, produce such dissimilar effects, will probably long remain unknown. We refer them, and I think with propriety, in the absence of a more accurate knowledge of the subject, to the endless varieties of constitution on which atmospherical causes, equally obscure and innumerable, are perpetually acting. Other sorts of headaches occur which it will be hardly necessary to particularize. Indigestion will produce hemicrania or an affection of only one side of the head. There are also numberless headaches symptometic of fevers, and of other local diseases. very variety, in the present imperfect state of our knowledge, ought to be noticed, but all taken collectively have not as yet been able to do much towards a tolerably decent knowledge of the pathology of the head. ‘There are some warm climates in which head- aches are unknown: they are more common among women than among men, and among the rich and luxurious than among the poor and abstemious. Like some other bad pains they are happily lessened in frequency and violence towards the decline of life, and are best guarded against by good air, exercise, and those habits of temperance and regularity which give permanent strength to the constitution, Krom a conviction that electricity has much to do with the cause of headaches, I have set about various experiments, in order to try if the defect or irregularity of electricity might be supplied by means of artificial conductors, so contrived as to let into the house a collected portion of the fluid ; or by means of the electric machine and insulating stoo]. I recommend the repetition of these and such like experiments to those who have time, and are willing to cooperate with me in such curious trials; but I would admonish the practitioner, at the same time, to avoid giving the patient much hopes of relief, at the onset, lest in experiments which require so much nicety and skill, an accidental failure in the result of the practice should fling a premature slur on the attempt.