Essentials of the principles and practice of medicine : a handbook for students and practitioners / by Henry Hartshorne.

  • Henry Hartshorne
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essentials of the principles and practice of medicine : a handbook for students and practitioners / by Henry Hartshorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    of the g-anglionic nerve-centres ; which abnormal condition is the result (Addison) of either 1, corpuscular toxsemia, or 2, plasmic toxaemia, or 3 (Campbell and Muller), sympathetic ir- ritation from local inflammation. A pathological classification of fevers, convenient for some pur- poses, is, into irritative, reactive, and toxaemic. fevers. The ganglionic nervous S3stem would seem to be most involved in the first, or jMegmasice (pneumonia, pleurisy. &c.); the spinal sys- tem in the second (intermittent and remittent fevers) ; the whole nervous system, and prominently the brain, in the third, as typhus, typhoid and '' spotted or cerebral fever. Dr. Allbutt compares intermittent fever, as a periodic discharge of tension with disen- gagement of heat^ to epilepsy, which is a periodic discharge of tension in the form of motion. ^ TOXEMIA. Toxsemia, more properly tox^co7^ce7ma (from Tn^/Kni\ poison, and aljua^ blood), is a term used to indicate pofsonmjy of the hlood. After all the long and reiterated disputes between the advo- cates of the exclusive solidist and humoral pathologies, it has now become a matter of general recognition that both the fluids and the solids are involved in almost every disease,—their mutual interdependence making the contrary impossible. Certain diseases, however, more than others, are believed, upon the strongest evidence, to depend upon a chemical and dynamic change in the bloody to which the name of toxemia is applied. Toxaemia may originate : 1. By the introduction into the blood of morbid poisons froyn'without; as in syphilis, small-pox, remit- tent fever, &c. 2. By morbid alteration from processes occur- ring in the blood, itself. 3. By absorption of poisonous material, by the vessels, from diseased parts of the ])ody ; as in purulent infection after wounds, &c. 4. By the non-excretion, and con- sequent accumulation in the blood, of post-organic or excremen- titious substances, which, by their own properties, or by the chemical changes they undergo, prove injurious to the system. Obstructive jaundice, and ura3mia, afibrd the best examples of this last occurrence. 1. All of the zymotic diseases (e. f/., exanthemata, yellow fever, diphtheria) have their origin explained by the first of the above modes of blood-poisoning. * Yet, our knowledge of the very existence of several of these morbid poisons is inferential only. Our idea of their nature is conjectural; and our reasonings upon their mode of action upon the blood and system at large are entirely speculative. Some facts, however (see Simon''s Lectures on Pathology)., are well deserving of notice. fluence in retarding oxidation can be demonstrated in a jar containing phosphorus, exhibits a remarkable power of lowering tlie temperature of animals to which it is administered.