A practical treatise on venereal diseases, or, Critical and experimental researches on inoculation : applied to the study of these affections : with a therapeutical summary and special formulary / by Ph. Ricord ; translated from the French by Henry Pilkington Drummond.

  • Ricord, Ph., 1800-1889. Traité pratique des maladies vénériennes. English
Date:
1843
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on venereal diseases, or, Critical and experimental researches on inoculation : applied to the study of these affections : with a therapeutical summary and special formulary / by Ph. Ricord ; translated from the French by Henry Pilkington Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    appearance on the points of insertion. Thus far it appears that the gonorrhoeal virus produced chancres; but these chancres healed of themselves, which is by no means the nature of chancres ari% syphili- tic ulcers. In this case it is true we find fresh chancres appear and vanish of their own accord: symptoms apparently syphilitica!, supervene; a bu- bo and after its resolution, ulcers of the throat, which healing, were succeeded by pustules; but the ulcers, the undoubted product of the inoculation, which ought to be characteristic, were not venereal. The bubo might depend upon the irritation of the ulcer on the glans, which we shall prove from Sw^diaur. The ulcers of the throat and the pus- tules might also depend upon other causes. Moreover, this train of symptoms occupied three years in its development; how can we be sure that a new infection did not take place without the local affection, which produced these symptoms, being observed? Might not this pa- tient have previously been affected with syphilis? The disease mayhave lain dormant in the system; an unclean connection may have commu- nicated syphilis to him without any apparent disease. This Hunter does not tell us, nor did he even ascertain it. How can we then rely upon such an observation? Can we then reckon much upon the sy- philitic nature of all the affections brought forward as syphilitical by great surgeons? It is plain that this point is important, in order to es- timate the value of the inoculation, of which we are speaking, and whose syphilitic results only relate to the nature of the consequences it offers. One tooth being replaced by another, Kuhn observed an ulcer in the mouth, and sometime after, a cutaneous eruption following, he considered it a syphilitical affection. The celebrated Lettsom, to whom he communicated the fact, was of the same opinion. Yet up- on the tooth being extracted, all disappeared. We see from this circumstance how readily the venereal nature of an affection was admitted at the time these authors wrote, and there- fore how little conclusive the observation of Hunter ought to be con- sidered, and how little it decides the question. Bell relates, that two young men tried some experiments with in- oculation upon themselves. The glans and prepuce, scarified with a lancet and then rubbed with gonorrheal matter, became covered with small ulcers, which had no resemblance to chancres, and healed with- out mercury. These positive facts contradict the former. They are far more .decisive, because some circumstance may have been combined with the inoculations of Andree and Hunter, which may have transformed the result into something, other than would have been the natural pro- duct of the inoculation. In those of Bell, the matter is more clear and less involved in doubt. If the inoculated virus be syphilitica], the ulcer must be venereal, as soon as it is formed. We know nothing 'which can alter the nature of the ulcer produced by the syphilitical infection, or prevent it assuming its essence and character. It is there-
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