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.

    138/880 (page 20)
    1^0 It only remains to mention one other law, which is but little shared by poisons of the vegetable or mineral kingdoms. It Ls well known that the actions of vegetable or mineral poisons are not influenced by the climate in which they are administered. Climate, however, has the proj)erty of gi-eatly modifying the intensity of morbid poisons. The severe forms of tyjjhous so common in tin; north latitudes are hardly kno^vD in more southern latitudes, and the cholera has been infinitely more fatal in Europe and in Amerir a than in the country which gave it origin; but besides influenci: : the intensity of the disease, climate or season, or both, greatly modify the sjoecific nature of morbid poisons. In one season, for instance, typhous fever will attack only the glandular sti-uctmc of the intestinal canal; in another only the mucous tis.sue of the same part, the glands or follicles being healthy; while, in another season, no disease whatever of the intestinal canal can be tracol. Again, in one pahidal district the liver will be inflamed and tlie spleen healthy, and in another the liver will be unafl'ected but the spleen disorganized. In both cases the generic character of tlie disease remains the same, but its specific character varies. It will have been seen, that this variety of pathological phenomena is also caused by peculiarity of idiosyncmsy, and that nothing can be mnn different than the distinct, the confluent, and the hom small-pox from each other; and yet all these different varieties may exist in different persons inoculated with the same poison. The charact< r of the vaccine pustule is equally various; so that that which in- sures exemption from the small-pox has not yet been deterniinrri: neither have pathologists determined the primary forms of syjihiliiii- ulcers. It is impoi-tant, therefore, to remember, in the study cm moi-bid poisons, that absolute unifoimity of pathological phenomena is not to be expected in different pei'sons and in different seasons. There is a limit, howcA^er, within which theii* variations oscillate, and within wliich nature has bounded her deviations. The laws of poisons are more important than their modus oper- andi; and this part of the subject has been deeply investigated by modern physiologists, and deserves some consideration. The great and .striking alterations which often take place in the blood, led from a, very remote ])eriod to the doctrine of humoralism, or, tliat a morbid state of the fluids was the gi-oat and j)rimary oiusc of disease. On the contrary, when anatomy began to be cultivaldi. and nerves traced into evniy organ and tissue, it was su]i]>osed tliat disordered actions of these prime agents of motion, and of the groU phenomena of animal life, were the great causes of disease ; the morljid state of the fluids being secondary. Fontnna determined to i)rovo this Jatter theory, and founrl, to his surprise, on laying bare the sciatic nerve in a great number of rabbits, that neither the