A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley.

  • Charles-Paul Diday
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on syphilis in new-born children and infants at the breast / by P. Diday ; translated by G. Whitley. 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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    ON SYPHILIS IN NEAV-BORN CHILDREN. child has been infected by actual contact (subagitatus a turpissimo in moribus homine). II. That in which it has been suckled by an infected nurse. III. That in which, being itself infected, it com- municates the disease to its nui’se. We see that this description includes everything except the most usual mode of communication, that by generation. Another Avriter of this ])eriod seems to have been on the right track. Augier Terrier (1553) thus expresses himself: “Cumin utero morbus contrahitur, tanquam hereditarium fit malum, et tanquam corruptum elementum una cum paterno vel materno semiue infunditur; aut si mater a die conceptionis in morbum inciderit, communicatio fcctui, vitiosis infectisque humoribus.^^ The three modes in Avhich infection may occur during intra-uterine life are here very clearly defined, and modern researches have added nothing to this distinction. Unfortunately, in establishing it. Terrier appears to have trusted more to its probability than to its reality; for he does not allude to any observation of his own in support of it. An almost equally positive assertion is met with in the work of one of his contemporaries. The following apparently decisive pas- sage may be quoted from P. Hascharidus (1554): “Trans- mittitur per generationem, quoniam hie morbus humores vitiat et corrumpit; unde semen corruptem qui sic affecti sunt emittunt, et ex hoc proles vitiata ac corrupta creatur.’' But on reading the whole chapter it becomes evident that, far from relpng upon facts or even a personal conviction, he has no other basis for this asser- tion than the belief of Hi^opocrates in the conformity of the semen Avith the peculiarities of the individual by whom it is secreted. Let us admit, hoAvever, that some of the developments of this doctrine appear to be proper to him. Thus, he says, “ children are more severely infected Avhen the infection is derived from the mother, because they then acquire the disease from a double source, generation and lactation.” But among these definite assertions, justified though they have been by later experience, Ave do not meet Avith a single observation, or even a description ! Perhaps, after all, Ave ought not to be much surprised at the gaps Avhich Ave meet Avith in the Avorks of the writers of this period. Where could tliey have found room for facts in the midst of their interminable disser- tations on the primitive seat of the French disease, Avhich they assume, almost unanimously, to be tlie liver; on its essential cause.
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