Contributions to practical medicine / by James Begbie.

  • James Begbie
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to practical medicine / by James Begbie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/334 page 13
    late Dr. John Taylor, however, was at the very time engaged in conducting an inquiry into the causes of pericarditis, the result of which has since been published, and been the means of throwing much additional light on this still obscure subject. And to the very valuable observations of Dr. Taylor on albuminuria as a frequent cause of pericarditis, we have to add those of Dr. Scott Alison and others on scarlatina as productive of similar effects. Other blood diseases have been noticed as the occasional source of inflammation of the mem- branes of the heart, and more particularly typhus and small- pox ; but I am not aware that gout has been referred to as the cause of such affection * This is the more remarkable, as the close resemblance between gout and rheumatism as blood disorders, and their known tendencies to excite inflammatory action in certain tissues, might have led us from analogy to conclude that the heart, which is so often the seat of rheumatic inflammation, should be also that of the inflammation in con- nexion with gout.f Dr. Watson, however, tells us that in gout, though many functions suffer, there is no tendency to carditis. Notwithstanding, we have still much to learn of the history of pericarditis, and of endocarditis, independent of rheumatism and renal disease, and have a wide field of dis- covery open to us in the investigation of the etiology of the milk-patches or white spots on the surface of the heart, which have engaged the attention and perplexed the minds of patho- logists (and which Mr. Paget has now demonstrated to be the products of inflammation), as well as of the various pathologi- * Corvisart has remarked that rheumatic and gouty affections are frequent causes of adhesion of the pericardium. f The material of gout appears certainly to have a greater affinity for the synovial and mucous surfaces; that of rheumatism for the fibrous and serous membranes. Hence we find in the former, besides the affection of the joints, an intimate connection with tonsillitis, bronchitis, gonorrhoea, and other inflam- matory affections of the mucous membranes ; while in the latter the most fre- quent connection is with pleurisy, pericarditis, and peritonitis.
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