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.

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    salivation produced by mercury. These are strictly self-limited diseases, having their own rise, climax, and decline ; and I know of no medical practice which is able, were it deemed necessary, to divert them from their appropriate course, or hasten their termination. [Note B.] It may appear to some, that the distinction of these diseases from others, is the old distinction of acute and chronic. Yet on due inquiry, such an identification is not found to be sustained, for there are some acute diseases which, we have reason to believe, are shortened by the employment of remedies; while, on the other hand, certain chronic cases of disease are known to get well spontaneously, after years of con- tinuance. If the inquiry be made, why one disease has necessary limits, while another is without them? the reply is not uniform, nor always easy to be made. Sometimes the law of the disease may be traced to the nature of the exciting cause. Thus the morbid poison of measles, or of small pox, when received into the body, produces a self-limited disease; but the morbid poisons of psora and syphilis may give rise to others which