A practical treatise on medical diagnosis for students and physicians / by John H. Musser.

  • John Herr Musser
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on medical diagnosis for students and physicians / by John H. Musser. 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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    terms are employed to indicate the nature of the inheritance. Direct inheritance means that the child acquires the disease at birth. If both parents have the disease, the child is likely to suffer more severely, and this is spoken of as cumulative inheritance. By indirect inheritance is meant the condition in which the collateral ancestry and not the par- ents have had the disease. Both parents may appear to be healthy, although the grandparents, or earlier ancestors in the direct line, have suffered from the same disease, and this is called atavistic inheritance. By similar inheritance is meant the occurrence in the offspring of a disease similar to but not identical with that from which the parents have suffered. Examples of such diseases are Huntington's chorea and Goldflam's periodic paralysis. By dissimilar inheritance is meant the development in the offspring of a form of nervous disease differing from that which existed in the parents, as an epileptic child born of parents suffering from neurasthenia, hysteria, or insanity. The indica- tions of neurotic heredity are manifold. Inquiries must be made in regard to insanity and epilepsy, to instances of suicide, to peculiarities of character, to criminal tendencies, to addiction to the use of drugs, such as alcohol or opium; to congenital deformities; or to congenital diseases, such as deaf-mutism. Charcot has called attention to the fact that certain of the so-called rheumatic manifestations may occur in the antecedents of a patient suffering from nervous disease. Contagious Diseases. In the inquiry it may be well to ascertain the probability of disease being transmitted from husband to wife, or the opposite. Syphilis, gonorrhoea, and tuberculosis are examples. Not only may this prob- ability apply to the transmission of disease from husband to wife, but to their offspring as well. Then, too, we must inquire of mothers for manifestations of syphilis in the children. Caution must be exercised in the pursuit of knowledge of this kind, as strained, or even ruptured, marital relations may result from inju- dicious intimations. Common Morbid Processes. The data of the family history are of no avail unless it is remem- bered that many fundamentally identical affections have various modes of expression. Various diseases may be allied to the one suspected to exist in the patient, and be overlooked because of this difference of expression. One member of a family may die of heart disease, another of rheumatism, or some may have had chorea, or cutaneous affections, or renal calculi; such ailments are expressions of the same morbid process. Finlayson well puts them into groups and fittingly portrays them as follows : '' In regard to scrofulous [tuberculous] diseases, we ask for swollen glands or ' waxy kernels,' or running in the neck ; diseases of the spine and other bones, bad joints, white swellings, or ' incomes,' as they are termed in Scotland; disease of the glands, of the bowels, water in the head, consumption of the lungs, or decline, or weakness of the chest, with spitting of blood, and so on.
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