Abraham Colles / [Thomas Kirkpatrick].

  • Percy Kirkpatrick
Date:
[1931]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Abraham Colles / [Thomas Kirkpatrick]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/22 page 16
    mercury fell into great disrepute, and the non-mercurial treat¬ ment of venereal disease was advocated. In so far as this treat¬ ment was used for venereal disease which was not syphilitic the gain was great, but as no clear distinction was drawn between the various forms of venereal disease it was impossible to frame general rules, to guide practitioners as to when mercury was to be used. The great advocate in Dublin for the non-mercurial treatment was Richard Carmichael, who looked on the use of mercury, except for the treatment of the typical Hunterian chancre and its secondary symptoms, as almost criminal. Colles on the other hand advocated strongly the use of mercury, but he used it under a very rigid control, both of the patient and of the drug. His books abounds with wise advice founded on his vast clinical experience of the disease both in Steevens and the Lock Hospitals. To us now the most interesting chapter in the book is that in which he deals with syphilis infantum, of which he gives an admirable description. He admits that there are many things in connection with the transmission of syphilis from the parents to the children which he is unable to explain, but he states the facts as he found them and makes no attempt to force them into conformity with his views of the disease. It is in this chapter that he states what is now known as Colles^s Law.” ‘ ‘ One fact well deserving of our detention is this : that a child horn of a mother who is without any obvious venereal sj^mptoms and which, with¬ out being exposed to any infection subsequent to its birth, shows this disease when it is a few wrecks old, this child will infect the most healthy nurse, whether she suckle it or merely handle and dress it; and yet this child is never known to infect its mother, even though she suckle it while it has venereal ulcers on the lips and tongue.” (p. 304.) Although this Law ” was original the observation on which it was founded had been made many years earlier. Still, in his History of Pediatrics (London 1931), gives the following quotation from a treatise on the care of children by Simon de Vallambert, published in 1565. I saw at Tours a goldsmith who for 14 or 15 years since he had the Great Pox had felt no ill at ail and seemed quite well, nevertheless all his children that he has had since then had the Pox soon after they were born, at seven or eight days old, and gave it to their Nurse, although the mother was an honest woman well spoken of, who strangely enough had never taken the disease from her husband and had not been affected in any way.” (Cinq livres, De la maniere de nourrir et gouverner les enfants des leur naissance. Par M. Simon de Vallambert. A Poictiers. 1565.) Colles closes bis book with a chapter on the use of mercury in affections of the nervous system, and he describes the cases of several patients, suffering from various nervous affections, in which great benefit was derived from the administration of mercury. Although it seems to have been in his mind, he never suggests that he considered that these conditions were connected with syphilis. In spite of his accurate knowledge of primary and secondary syphilis and his association of some of the earlier
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