An inquiry into the curability of consumption, the prevention and the progress of improvement in the treatment / by James Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, James, 1818-1897.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the curability of consumption, the prevention and the progress of improvement in the treatment / by James Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    increased by the debility. We are encouraged, therefore, to attempt the removal of the tubercles, by the fact of their not being of a mahgnant nature; and I shall have occasion to show that, in the great majority of cases where recovery takes place, they go back instead of sup- purating, and are either absorbed, or transformed into chalky or stony bodies. Tubercular disease is not pecuhar to the lungs, but occurs in many other organs, especially the glands, where recovery has been distinctly traced out in the same ways; and it is caused by a pecuhar debihtated or cachectic state of the system, which, in the opinion of almost all medical men, is identical with the scrofulous constitution. This scrofulous or tubercular state being the cause of the formation of these bodies, it follows that its removal must constitute an important indication in the prevention as well as treatment of consumption in every stage. What, then, is this constitutional state which causes the formation of these tubercular bodies ] I beheve that it is a state of imperfect nutrition: a condition in which the digestive organs are unable to manufacture from the food a perfect kind of blood, capable of nourishing every part, without allowing some imperfectly formed particles to escape at the same time. The digestive organs are not, however, the only ones at fault. Their office is chiefly to dissolve the food, and it is in the lungs, through which organs the chyle or fluid newly formed from the food has to pass, in order to be converted into perfect blood by the action of the oxygen of the air, that the process is completed. This is the function which is chiefly at fault, and we find that tubercular particles are arrested in the lungs, and deposited there in a far greater number of instances than in any other part. Some are born with a much stronger predisposition to tubercular deposit than others, but the long-continued operation of debihtating causes, among the chief of which