Observations on morbid poisons, chronic and acute : the first compehending syphilis, yaws, sivvens, elephantiasis, and the anomala confounded with them ; the second the acute contagions, particularly the variolous & vaccine / by Joseph Adams.

  • Adams, Joseph, 1756-1818.
Date:
1807
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on morbid poisons, chronic and acute : the first compehending syphilis, yaws, sivvens, elephantiasis, and the anomala confounded with them ; the second the acute contagions, particularly the variolous & vaccine / by Joseph Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    I remark how much a slight, though very judicious, deviation from Mr. Hunter’s language, loses its effect by not being defined. In some of the valuable cases, which Mr. Abernethy’s Surgical Observations afford, we meet with the term morbific poison. It is well known that Mr. Hunter divided animal poisons into the natural and the diseased. The first [which I should rather call the original] are those which form a part of an animal when in health, and though deliterious to another, do not communicate a power of affecting others. Of this kind is the poison of the scorpion, the adder, and other venomous animals. The morbid poisons, on the contrary, never exist but under disease, and have a power of ex- citing a similar disease by the secretion of matter, which will have the same properties. Now we shall find that a number of cases, communicated by Mr. Abernethy, cannot be proved to come strictly within the description of either, and that there is every reason to believe they arise from contagion; that is, he found diseases in the penis, which, from every attendant circumstance, appeared to arise from coition, yet he never describes similar ones in the vagina. In these instances the secretion of the vagina appears to be morbific ;* but till we are better acquainted with the whole his- tory of such cases, we are not authorised to say that it is morbid. In the former edition of this work, I took notice of certain com- plaints of this kind, which occurred on the penis, but which had never been described in the vagina.t That Mr. Abernethy has the same circumstance in view, appears by some passages, which I shall now produce. “ The frequent cases of such disorders, which I have recently met with,” says he, “ has suggested the idea that they are increas- ing of late ; nor is it improbable, since they are, like syphilis, pro- pagated by promiscuous intercourse from secretions or sores, not so readily curable by mercury as those that are venereal, and some of * Surgical Observations, 1804, page 127. f Morbid Poisons, page 144, first edition.