Copy 1, Volume 2

The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good].

  • John Mason Good
Date:
1829
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study of medicine. Containing all the author's ... improvements / [John Mason Good]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    536/724 (page 526)
    Gren. VII. Sp. XIII. « K. Hepa- titis acuta. Found by Chisholm contagious. 6 HE. Hepa- titis chro- nica. Descrip- tion. Excess. took place in four out of the five histories recorded by him, he believes they are rarely wanting *.] Dr. Chisholm found this disease on one occasion conta- gious. It was at Grenada in the winter of 1786, in districts peculiarly exposed to the influence of chilling northerly winds, and possessing large tracts of marsh. The disease was lamentably mortiferous, though the symptoms were insidious, rather than violent. It usually destroyed in the course of six days—and the deaths were calculated at one in every six‘. In CHRONIC HEPATITIS, all the pene symptoms, as already observed, show themselves obscurely. The pulse is something quicker than usual, and there is an obtuse pain in the region of the liver; but such as would not perhaps be noticed, if it were not inquired into, and the organ pressed upon, and connected with a sudden quick expira- tion after an attempt to inspire deeply ; and there is also an indistinct uneasiness generally, though not always, about the right shoulder ; all the symptoms becoming ex- acerbated at a certain period of the day, commonly about four o’clock in the afternoon. But in conjunction with the proper hepatic symptoms, the most obvious are those of dyspepsy and atrophy; the appetite fails, the stomach is capricious, the animal spirits flag, and the flesh wastes away. ‘The bowels are generally costive, and the stools often clay-coloured, though not always ; and there is usu- ally a sallowness on the skin; or a dirty greenish hue, © which Dr. Darwin, from its resemblance to the colour of a full-grown silk-worm, has denominated bombycinous. The disease slowly advances to suppuration, or terminates in a scirrhous induration; but in many instances, and espe- cially after a habit of hard eating or drinking, is the index of a broken-up constitution. Excess in eating and drinking, or indeed in any other voluptuousness, is the common cause of this variety of he- patitis in temperate regions {, though it sometimes follows upon obstinate quartans. It is, however, a more frequent * P. Ch. Louis, Mém. Anat. Pathologiques, p. 407. + Climate and Diseases of Tropical Countries, &¢c. p. 66, 8vo. Lond. 1822. +t In this country, says Dr. Bateman, the chronic hepatitis is more com- mon than the acute. Art. LIVER, Rees’s Cyclopedia,—Ep.