On consumption and on certain diseases of the lungs and pleuræ / by R. Douglas Powell.
- Sir Richard Powell, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1878
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On consumption and on certain diseases of the lungs and pleuræ / by R. Douglas Powell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![lately been suspected—that people are, in fact, only very exceptionally, if ever, born to die of tuberculosis. A due appreciation of this doctrine, so different from that even now accepted by many, is of almost national importance in giving encouragement to those hygienic and other measures of pre- vention, the neglect of which has too often been sanctioned by a foregone conclusion. It would, I think, however, be extremely injudicious to deny hereditary predisposition to tubercle altogether. Moreover, when we come to the question of hereditary predisposition to those forms of consumption which originate in catarrhal pneumonia, it is freely admitted that the offspring of consumptive parents have a tendency to this form of pulmonary phthisis, that the scrofulous have a like tendency [Niemeyer], and that scrofulosis is sometimes hereditary.9 Again, from the tendency to the occurrence of chronic inflammation, especially in glands, leaving behind cheesy deposits, by which the scrofulous diathesis is char- acterised, it is regarded as the constitutional state in which true tuberculosis is most likely to occur. My own observation would not enable me to agree in this latter view. These statements necessitate a considerable addition to the list of those who are hereditarily liable to tubercle in the old-fashioned sense of the term. But it must be remarked that catarrhal pneumonia and scrofulosis can be more effi- ciently guarded against, by attention to climate, soil, etc., and more successfully treated, than truly tubercular disease. My colleague, Dr. C. Theodore Williams, the latest authority on the question of hereditary predisposition to consumption (in its broad sense), in a paper read before the Medical and Chirurgical Society in January, 1871, gave 48 percent, as the proportion in which, out of IOOO carefully noted cases, family predisposition could be traced, using the term family to include brothers and sisters and first cousins. It thus appears that, even making every allowance for alterations in terms 9 Waldenburg, Die Tuberculose, etc., p. 524.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21007743_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
