The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner.

  • Thomas Hawkes Tanner
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practice of medicine / by Thomas Hawkes Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    as well as the nervous restlessness. The dose must be sufficient to ac- complish these objects. And lastly, to remove that low state of health which both favors thrombosis and the degeneration of tissues injured by a clot when formed, we must trust to a good nourishing diet, the effects of pure air, and the administration of quinine (F. 3T9) or of sulphurous acid (F. 48). Where the result is successful, the practitioner had better be prepared to find that the necessarily tedious convalescence has excited the dis- pleasure of the patient's friends, who are generally unreasonable in proportion to their inability to comprehend the simplest facts in medical science. Annoyance at this circumstance will, however, be lessened by remembering the great danger from which the sufferer has been rescued; as well as by recollecting that if the physician now and then gets blame where he deserves great credit, he also frequently receives much higher praise than is merited. 11. H^IMATOZOA In the writings of old authors, from the time of Pliny, cases are to be found recording the presence of animalculae in the blood [lisematozoa, from Aljia = blood + Ziuov = an animal]. The physi- cians of the present day have also published examples of this occurrence; but while the statements of some of these gentlemen have been confirmed by independent observers, those of others have been refuted. Thus, Bushnan has reported the case of a boy affected with influenza, in whose blood worms half an inch long were detected an hour after bleeding. According to Rhind, however, these were merely the larvae of the Tipula oleracea, a fly which is so abundantly found in summer in ditch and river water; or, according to Yon Siebold, they consisted of the red larvae of the Chironomus plumosus, frequent in water-barrels. Of course they were accidentally introduced into the blood after its withdrawal from the body. Again, Goodfellow met with an instance, in which animalculse, varying in length from ^o'fto to g^^th of an inch, were present in the blood of a fever patient; but it is impossible to say what they really were. The Distoma haematobium (Bilharzia haematobia) was first discovered by Bilharz, in Egypt, during 1851; where it is so common, that nearly half of the adults are supposed to be infected with it. This entozoon in- habits the vena portae, as well as the mesenteric, and hepatic, and bladder, and intestinal veins. Its habitat is the blood; and hence it may be carried into other parts than those just mentioned. It is not hermaphro- ditic, the two sexes being very dissimilar. The male is much larger than the female, being about half an inch in length. On the under surface of the cylindrical body, extending from just below the ventral sucker to near the end of the pointed tail, is a kind of groove or deep slit (canalis gynae- cophorus) ; in which the female is lodged during copulation. The latter is more filiform and narrower, though rather longer, than the male. Moquin-Tandon is in error in believing that the female is the superior, and that she lodges the male. These remarkable parasites are very prev- alent in those persons who drink the unfiltered waters of the Nile, and who consume fish from this river in a half putrid state. The symptoms