Consumption : its nature, prevention, and homeopathic treatment / (with illustrations of homeopathic practice).

  • Hitchman, William.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption : its nature, prevention, and homeopathic treatment / (with illustrations of homeopathic practice). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    apprehensions and alarm. Frequently indeed it occurs with very slight concomitant indications of deranged health, and possibly it may prove even of temporary duration, the frame recovering a perceptible although spurious embonpoint, on some salutary change. The sig- nificant character of the emaciation of consumption requires to be well considered; it takes its rise from the morbid condition of the nervous system, and the defective organization and nutrition of nerve-globules, cells, areolar tissue, and of all those life-giving structures of which nerve-globules form the natural basis. There is a con- sequent loss of correspondence, a want of balance, an inharmonious equilibrium between the physiological powers of healthy deposition and absorption. It indicates that the system of the patient is becoming so decidedly consumptive as to cease to be capable of sustaining the healthy functions of life, and more especially the functions of respiration and nutrition. The atrophy of consumption is so important, both in regard to diagnosis and treatment, that it is impossible to be too vigilant in its detection—whenever its existence is supected, either in those who are hereditarily predis- posed to the disease, or in individuals placed under cir- cumstances in which a consumptive state of the system is likely to be produced—nor too careful in assiduously watching its progress. For these purposes direct medical observations on the weight are absolutely necessary; no vague notions on this point will serve any useful purpose. Patients, and those of the consumptive temperament especially, will frequently mistake the puflmess of the