Lectures on inflammation : exhibiting a view of the general doctrines, pathological and practical, of medical surgery / by John Thomson.

  • Thomson, John, 1765-1846.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on inflammation : exhibiting a view of the general doctrines, pathological and practical, of medical surgery / by John Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    15/542
    properly and most frequently under the care of the physi- cian. To such of you as have any acquaintance with prac- tical medicine, it will only be necessary to mention, as exam- ples of these affections, the symptomatic fever which attends inflammation, whether this affection has been induced by external injury, or has occurred spontaneously in the body from internal disease; the hectic fever supervening to long continued process of suppuration; the febrile state, and other morbid affections which are sometimes brought on by the too sudden and injudicious use of mercury ; bilious fever, and the various derangements of the digestive organs, which are sometimes the cause, and at other times the consequence, of local diseases; the nervous affections, such as apoplexy, convulsions, paralysis, and mania, which arise not unfre- quently from injuries of the head; and locked jaw, or teta- nus, which, in warm climates particularly, is so very liable to be induced by punctured wounds. These are morbid affections, the proper study and treatment of which, when they occur without local injury, are supposed to belong to the physician rather than to the surgeon; but occurring, as they do very frequently in chirurgical diseases, and always modifying or aggravating the effects of these diseases, igno- rance of their nature, relations, and modes of cure, is not only inexcusable, but highly criminal in the practitioner who ven- tures to undertake their treatment. To these remarks it seems scarcely necessary to add, that an accurate knowledge of external and internal diseases, and of their proper modes of treatment, implies a knowledge not only of the structure of the human body, and its functions in the state of health, but also of its deviations from this state during diseases, as well as of the various causes by which diseases may be induced, and of the means remedial and dietetic, by which they may be cured or relieved. What- ever branches, therefore, of elementary education, and what- ever kinds of medical knowledge are requisite to the physi- cian, the same must of necessity be equally so to the surgeon. I am happy to be able to quote to you, upon this subject, the sentiments of the celebrated M. Quesnai, author of the (Economical System in Political (Economy. The senti- ments of this author are the more deserving of your atten- tion, that M. Quesnai had practised with great reputation both branches of the healing art, having been in early life a