Fallacies of the faculty, being the spirit of the chronothermal system. In a series of lectures / [Samuel Dickson].

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fallacies of the faculty, being the spirit of the chronothermal system. In a series of lectures / [Samuel Dickson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    293/310 (page 289)
    I said in the outset I will only appeal to results—to nature. I have proved^ however; I hope to the satisfaction of most of you, 1. That the phenomena of perfect Health consist in a regular series of alternate actions, each embracing a special portion of time. 2. That Disease under all its modifications, is in the first place a simple exaggeration or diminution of the same actions, and being universally alternative with a com¬ parative state of health, strictly speaking, resolves itself into Fever, remittent or intermittent, chronic or acute :—every kind of structural lesion or disorganization, from the caries or decay of a tooth, to the pulmonary decomposition of phthisis, and that state of the knee which is termed white swelling, being merely develop¬ ments in its course : —Tooth-consumption—-Lung-con¬ sumption—Knee-consumption. 1 3. That the tendency to disorganization, usually denomi¬ nated acute or inflammatory, differs from the chronic or scrofulous in the mere amount of motion and tempera¬ ture :—the former being more remarkably characterised by excess of both, consequently exhibits a more rapid pro¬ gress to decomposition or cure ; while the latter approaches its respective terminations, by more subdued, and there¬ fore slower and less obvious alternations of the same action and temperature. In what does consumption of a tooth vary from consumption of the lungs, except in the difference of tissue involved, and the degree of danger to life, arising out of the nature of the respective offices of each ? Disease, thus simplified, will be found to be amenable to a principle of treatment equally simple. Partaking of the nature of ague, throughout all its modifications, it will be best met by a practice in accordance with the proper principle of treatment of that distemper. When the doctrine of the Concoction of Humours, held its baneful sway over the mind of the physician, it was considered the greatest of medical errors to repel the paroxysm—each fit being