Nature in disease : illustrated in various discourses and essays : to which are added miscellaneous writings, chiefly on medical subjects / by Jacob Bigelow.

  • Bigelow, Jacob, 1786-1879.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nature in disease : illustrated in various discourses and essays : to which are added miscellaneous writings, chiefly on medical subjects / by Jacob Bigelow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/420 (page 5)
    under consideration, is, to a certain extent, a'ready admitted, both by the profession, and the public ; and this admission is evinced by the use of certain familiar terms of expression. Thus, when people speak of a ‘ settled disease,’ or of the time of ‘the run of a disease,’ it implies, on their part, a recognition of the law, that certain diseases regulate their own limits and period of continuance. It is difficult to select a perfectly satisfactory or convincing example of a self-limited disease from among the graver morbid affections, be- cause in these affections the solicitude of the practitioner usually leads him to the employ- ment of remedies, in consequence of which, the effect of remedies is mixed up with the phenom- ena of disease, so that the mind has difficulty in separating them. [Note A.] We must there- fore seek for our most striking or decisive exam- ples among those diseases which are sufficiently mild, not to be thought to require ordinarily the use of remedies, and in which the natural his- tory of the disease may be observed, divested of foreign influences. Such examples are found in the vaccine disease, the chicken pox, and the