How to prevent consumption / by Dr. Wm. A. Alcott.

  • Alcott, William A. (William Andrus), 1798-1859.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: How to prevent consumption / by Dr. Wm. A. Alcott. 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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    who have made the causes of disease, and especially of consumption, a favorite object of study. From a treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, by Dr. James Clark,* we copy the following remarkable sentiments : Parents may transmit the tuberculous constitution to their children. Every member of the profession, by observing what is daily passing- before him, may see numerous proofs of the truth of this statement. He will find many children presenting the tuberculous constitu- tion, while no traces of it are to be observed in the parents. The children of those who have suffered long from dyspeptic complaints, gout, cutaneous affections, or any other form of chronic disease, originating in derange- ment of the digestive function which has produced an influence on the constitution, are very frequently the sub- jects of scrofula, or of disorders which dispose to and ultimately induce tuberculous cachexia?. [By tubercu- lous cachexia?, is meant ;a habit of body in which tuber- cles or the seeds of consumption prevail.] But Dr. Clark is still more particular. Not only gout, cutaneous or skin diseases, and a disordered state of the digestive organs, induce the tuberculous habit in chil- dren, but the injurious influence of mercury on the system of the parent, debility from disease, age, &c.; in short, a deteriorated state of health in the parent from any cause. We beg the reader to note this testimony of Dr. C. with particular care. If any cause whatever which goes to deteriorate the health of the parent, will predis- pose his children to tubercles, and of course to pulmonary' • We do not quote from the writings of Dr. Clark, because he happens to have been consulting physician to the king and queen of Belgium, and physician to Queen Victoria, but because hit work, besides being the most recent, is considered by our medical men as one of the most valuable on the subject of which it treats which can be found in the English language.