Systematic case-taking : a practical guide to the examination and recording of medical cases / by Henry Lawrence McKisack.

  • McKisack, Henry Lawrence.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Systematic case-taking : a practical guide to the examination and recording of medical cases / by Henry Lawrence McKisack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    18/186 page 4
    1. Age.—The age of the patient influences not only the course, but also the incidence of disease. In infancy and childhood the power of resistance to many disturbing factors may be defective; hence the digestive, the respiratory, and the nervous systems are frequently affected. Digestive disturbances, rickets, laryngeal and bronchial catarrhs, infantile palsies, and chorea are among the results. Imperfect resistance also gives rise to the exanthemata and to tuberculosis, which in child- hood is likely to be seated in bones, joints, and lymphatic glands. In the adolescent period tubercular affections are still common, and especially phthisis, for which this is the favourite age ; acute rheumatism (causing greater damage to the heart in earlier than in later years) ; chlorosis ; hysteria ; gastric ulcer. By middle age the subject has acquired immunity from many affections, so that his liability to infections of all descriptions is dimin- ished, though by no means abolished. On the other hand, his tissues have a tendency to undergo degenera- tive changes, and we find a large group of affections connected with changes in the arteries and defects of metabolism—viz., arterio-sclerosis, aneurism, cardio- sclerosis, gout, renal calculus, gall-stones, cancer, pro- found anaemias and blood diseases, and insanity. Ter- tiary syphilitic phenomena and the late parasyphilitic diseases—e.g., locomotor ataxia, general paresis—now appear, and, generally speaking, the results of occupa- tion, habits, and hardships, are met with most frequently in this period of life. With the arrival of old age we look for a further development of the degenerations. 2. Sex.—In childhood sex has but little influence on the incidence or course of disease, except in the case of haemophilia, \yhich commonly shows itself in boys in the first or second year. From puberty onward consider-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3