Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines.
- Date:
- 1827
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Reports of the Medical Society of the City of New-York on nostrums, or secret medicines. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![[ 12 ] to cold, intemperate living, and perhaps with some origi- nal vice of liabit. This constitutional vice or predisposi- tion, is generally thought to be a lymphatic temperament, and the morbid action to be nearly allied with scrofula. This was the opinion of John Hunter, who treated these cases with various success, with cicuta and tonics, as bark, iron, sea-bathing, &c. But that they differ materially from scrofula, may be inferred, from their yielding to means which exert little or no action over that disease. To give a clear description of these cases is exceedingly difficult; for each case usually exhibits much of individuality. The most prominent symptoms are ; inflammatory affection of one or more of the joints, most usually the knee, wrist, elbow or ankle joints; more rarely the metacarpal, finger, and sterno-clavicular articulations. The inflammation of the joints is in the first instance, of a sub-acute character, attended with soreness and tenderness to the touch, some stiffness on motion, a moderate degree of swelling, with pains darting through them, and little or no discolouration of the integuments-, but as the disease goes on gradually aggravating, the swelling augments, becomes red and very tender to the touch, more or less painful, with the supei-ven- tion of general pains throughout the system, which conti- nually harass the patient night and day, wearing him out with the hectic of irritation. Somclimes these swellings occur on the dorsum of the metacarpal or metatarsal bones, in the course of the fore arm and leg, more rarely on the other bones, and run the same course as the affec- tion of the joints. They are usually much larger and more prominent than the true sypliilitic node. If submit- ted early to a proper course of treatment, they are usually dispersed, otherwise they only diminish in size, lose their inflammatory character, and leave the joint or part with a limited degree of motion and use. Besides the thicken- ings and inflammations of the articulations and bony en-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21150084_0042.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
