A treatise on syphilis in which the history, symptoms, and method of treating every form of that disease are fully considered / By John Bacot.

  • Bacot, John, 1780-1870.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on syphilis in which the history, symptoms, and method of treating every form of that disease are fully considered / By John Bacot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    and feel disposed to refer all these minute distinctions and varieties to the person who is the subject of it: two facts, however, respecting this, the elevated sore, are clearly made out—that it is capable of producing a similar disease by inoculation, and that ulcers, similar both in their appearance and consequences, may be produced without breach of surface from diseased secretion only; but if theoretically these distinctions and niceties of shade in the same ulceration appear to me to be delusive and inconsequent, the practical dis- tinctions which Mr. Evans has pointed out in the diffe- rent stages of ulceration, that is, the pustular, the ulcer- ative, the elevated or granulating, and the depressed or cicatrizing, are highly important in treating them ; the notice taken, of general derangement of the health and constitutional disturbance, as precursory or accom- panying symptoms, are also w^ell worthy of remark. It is by attention to these particulars, however appa- rently minute, that we are enabled to adapt our means of cure to particular conditions of local affection ; that we now make the condition of the tongue and state of the pulse objects of inquiry; without, as was formerly too often the case, ordering mercurial frictions once or twice every day at least, whenever we met a breach of surface on any part of the male organs of genera- tion. Mr. Evans also merits commendation, on another account: there is no obscurity of language to be found in his work; he defines clearly the sense in which he applies his distinctive epithets ; and if we do not always agree with him, at least that does not arise from mis- taking his meaning. From this sketch of Mr. Evans’s labours, I must infer that all which he enables us to assume is, an answ'er to our first question — that it is possible to ascertain clearly and distinctly certain forms of ulcer- ation which are not the produce of impure connexion, and, moreover, that his observations go far to prove the negative of our second query, namely, that sores not being so produced are not followed by constitu- tional affections. But in order to solve our third query we must ])roceed farther in our search, and examine the