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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    cessively fatal to men in the prime and vigour of age. They are emphatically the morbi populares. The name Zymotic, first suggested by Dr. William Farr to desig- nate the class, is not to be understood as implying the hypothesis that these diseases are fermentations, which the derivation of the term would lead one to believe. It has become extensively used of late as applied to the diseases, whose characters as a class are already indicated, and for which some convenient term is required. The class then to which the term Zymotic has been applied, is in- tended to comprehend all the principal diseases which have prevailed as epidemics, or endemics; and all those wliich are communicable eitlier by human contact, or hy animals in a state of disease; as well as the diseases that result from the scarcity and the deterioration of the necessary kinds of food, or from parasitic animals. The diseases of this class are thus conveniently arranged into fom- ordei-s or groups, of which fever, syphilis, scurvy, worms, are the common names typical of the respective groups. In the greater number of the diseases of this class the blood is more or less changed, and by some is presumed to be the primary seat of diseases which result from specific poisons, of organic origin, either derived from without, or generated within the body. These specific poisons tend to produce in the blood an excess of those decomposing organic compounds, which physiology teaches us are always present in the circulating current. Physiological Modes in whicii Poisons act Illustrate by Analogy the Zymotic Diseases.—If the reader will now consider the following statements as to the modes in which poisons act physiologically, he will be prepared to appreciate the efiects of those conditions which, like poisons, induce diseases of the class termed Zymotic. The actions of poisons are subject to certain geneml laws,—the most important of wliich are, first, that they have all cei-tain defi- nite and specific actions; second, that they all lie latent in the system a certain but varying period of time before those actions are set up; and third, that the phenomena resulting from their action vary in some degree, according to the dose, and to the receptivity of the patient. These laws are common to all poisons, but there are also many others which are peculiar to individual poisons or classes of poisons, and it may be necessaiy to notice a few of them. The frst law, or that of the definite and specific actions of poisons, cannot be doubted ; for if it be supposed that agents acting on the human body do not produce their effects according to cei-tain definite la-w's, we can neither detennine the seat or coui-se of any disease, nor direct nor judge of the operation of remedies. No ]ihysician, for instance, has seen castor oil produce tetanus, or colchicum in- toxicate the brain, or opium inflame the spleen; he perfectly well