Handbook of the science and practice of medicine / by William Aitken.

  • William Aitken
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of the science and practice of medicine / by William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    ago, that he believed as a rule that the constitutions of the past tliree generations had deteriorated progressively from father to son {Treatise on Pulmonwry Consumption, p. 11). Whatever, therefore, the explanation may be, wiites Dr. Alison, it certainly is a matter of fact, that the constitutional affections going along with the same extent of inflammation and its local efiects, are extremely various in different persons, previously alike in good health, or even in the same person at different times ; and that we are not entitled to deny that what happens in this way in different individual cases, may not happen also in nations and in seasons. As we are still very imperfectly informed as to the mode in which any local inflammation excites constitutional fever, I cannot see, he writes, that we have any reason to doubt that the constitutional re-action con- sequent on the excitement of a certain degi'ee of inflammation of the lungs may vary, equally as tliat which is consequent on the intro- duction of a certain quantity of the poison exciting typhus fever, measles, scarlatina, or cholera; in all of which the previous muscular strength goes for nothing in determining the degree or danger of depression or debility which may ensue. Dr. Christison has also recently communicated to the Medico- Ohirargical Society of Edinburgh, liis experience relative to the changes which have taken place in the con.stitution of fevers and inflammations in Edinbiu-gh during the last forty years. His expe- rience, as well as that of many of the older physicians of Edinbm-gh, shows that a transition had and did eveiy now and then take place from an inflammatwy form of fever to one of an astltenic type : that it was necessary also on the outburst of any epidemic to watch carefully the early cases, to observe the mode in which tlie fatal cases tenninate, and to observe generally the constitutional tendeticy or type of individual cases, in order to form an accurate judgment of the general character of the epidemic aboiit to prevail. It will be seen also, on i-eferring to the most approved and recent works on the diseases of India, that the descriptions of inflammations a^ well as fevers now seen there, when compared ^^^tll the statements of Dr. Johnson, Mr. Twining, and othei-s, twenty-five or thirty 3'ears ago, may be held to indicate that there has been a change in the usual form of re-action in inflammatoiy diseases in that climate as well as here. Such conclusions may be infei'red from the ex])eri- ence of Dr. Morehead recorded in his Clinical Researches on the Diseases of India, (vol. ii., pp. 71, 72, and 359, quoted hj Dr. Alison); and the experience of Mr. Martin, expres.sed in his recent classic work on Climate, bears out the same observation (Martin, p. 143). It appears therefore fidly showi, that the human body is cajmble. from causes unknown to us, of undergoing various alterations