Vicious circles / by Jamieson Hurry.

  • Hurry, Jamieson B. (Jamieson Boyd), 1857-1930.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Vicious circles / by Jamieson Hurry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The term “ vicious circle ” (circulus vitiosus) denotes a morbid condition in which cause and effect are so correlated that cause becomes effect, and effect becomes cause. Ablata causa cessat effectus and ablate effectu cessat causa. Many such circles are met with in disease, as indeed might be expected from the complexity of the processes involved; the better those processes are understood, the more closely will they be found correlated, and the more often will reciprocal relations be observed. The study of vicious circles is of considerable clinical value as contributing to accuracy in diagnosis and prognosis. Moreover, it assists treatment by directing attention to disease in its widest aspects (that is, to both its immediate and remote manifestations), and to the importance of cutting any link in the chain of morbid processes. Physiological Circles. By way of introduction some examples of physiological or healthy circles always operative in the body may be mentioned; from these examples it will be seen how frequently morbid processes are but exaggerations of physiological ones. 1. The processes of haemogenesis and haemolysis, by which the adjustment between the birth and destruction of blood corpuscles is effected, furnish an example of a healthy circle. The regulating apparatus is probably of the nature of a chemiotaxis, although this is still doubtful. At all events, a physiological polycythaemia or oligo- cythaemia is brought about according to requirements ; inadequate compensation may give rise to a vicious circle. 2. Another example is found in the mechanism of respiration, where a reciprocal relation exists between the condition of the blood and the activity of the respiratory centre. That activity, as has recently been proved, is augmented if the tension of carbonic dioxide in the blood Read before the Reading Pathological Society, February, 1901. [230/07]