On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis.

  • Robert Willis
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the special function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems : their vital import, and their bearing on health and disease / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    GO ation stronger than small boor,—and that they rarely like, and need not be compelled to take. Thus far I have had under consideration that large class of general disturbances of the health known as Re- mittent and Intermittent Fevers, the consequences of climatic and atmosphei’ic influences, and the single particular derange- ment of the system, which results from the absorption of a specific poison known by the name of Scarlatina. But fever is a generic title of very wide and very dissimilar import; and tlie diseases characterized as typhus and typhoid fever,— diseases that prove so destructive in the crowded quarters of populous towns especially, though their ravages are by no means restricted entirely to these,—are of a totally dissimilar nature from such as arise under the influence of exposure to the heats and chills of unhealthy climates, or the absorption of the poison that induces Scarlatina. It were foreign to my purpose to enter on the discussion of these important diseases in this place ; suffice it to say, that I am not so wedded to my own views of the nature of the sudoriparous function as to imagine that its implication is necessarily connected in the first instance with their production. I have for many years had too little opportunity of studying either typhus or typhoid fever, to give me any warranty for speaking authoritatively on the subject. These diseases are extremely rare in the dis- trict in which I have long practised—in the course of more than twenty years, I cannot remember having met with a greater number than five or six instances of continued fever that could be characterized as typhus or typhoid, although I have on various occasions been called to consult in cases of pneumonia that were believed to be fever of the kind. The instances in which I have met with simple continued fever I have always been able to connect with the foul effluvia and cor- rupted atmosphere engendered by mephitic drains and over- flowing privies. I do not know, then, to what extent the function of the skin is implicated in the first and earlier
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