The deputy physician : a complete household guide for the preservation of health and treatment of diseases / by Robert Bell.

  • Bell, Robert
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The deputy physician : a complete household guide for the preservation of health and treatment of diseases / by Robert Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    vitiated and the corpuscles enfeebled. Consequently the system ceases to be sufficiently nourished, and there is a falling off in flesh. Then the diseased blood supply circulating through the nervous system induces nervous depression, which co-exists. The pulse becomes slow and easily compressed. There is a feeling of numbness in the extremities, the organs of digestion and assimilation are lowered in tone. There is loss of memory, and a want of power in concentrating the thoughts ; a heavy drowsiness supervenes, which never seems to be removed by what appears to be really sound sleep, and all the functions of the body are carried on in an unsatisfactory manner. We will find, too, that the patient becomes tired and exhausted without sufficient cause. Then there are numerous local symptoms produced by the presence of scvbala in the colon, which very often are erroneously attributed to innocent organs. Among these may be noted most acute pain on pressure over the situation of the hardened matter, and so severe may this be that it may simulate peritonitis. “If it occurs in women, we often observe, as a conse- quence, ovarian neuralgia, this being excited by the irritation conveyed to the ovary by the presence of scybala in its immediate neighbourhood, while a predisposing cause exists in the lowered nervous tone consequent upon blood- poisoning. Frequently there is acute pain complained of over the ileo-caecal valve1, and in many, if not the very great majority of instances, typhlitis2 is a direct conse- quence of the irritation produced by scybala lodging in this cul-de-sac. Irritability of the bladder is another local symptom frequently resulting from a similar condition of things in the immediate neighbourhood of the organ. Displacements of the uterus may be, and are, frequently caused by large accumulations in the rectum, and in every 1 Ileo-caecal valve is situated at the junction of the small and laige intestine. 2 Inflammation of the caecum is termed typhlitus.
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