Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff.

  • Wolff, Abraham, 1819-1892.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Zymotic diseases : their correlation and causation / By A. Wolff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    84/196 (page 70)
    the most minute chemical and microscopical exami- nation fails to discover any adventitious diseased product. In cholera, where the disease appears to strike npon the nerves that preside over organic life, all vital functions seem to be at once arrested, and the patient dies, in the majority of cases, before the se- condary effects can be developed. Cases of enteric fever show the train of symp- toms that ensues wrhen zymotic action is set up in the glandular structure of the intestinal canal. We can trace the gradual extension of the diseased action by the functional disturbances that are ex- hibited during the course of the disease, and after death the dead-house tells us in language that it is impossible to misinterpret the nature of the diseased action. Glands in every stage of disintegration : mesenteric glands, reddened, swollen, gorged with blood; Peyer’s patches showing all the various stages of destructive inflammation, from simple en- gorgement to ulcerative disintegration ; and if we test the debris of the structures by the microscope we obtain additional evidence that structural death has ensued as a consequence of inflammatory disin- tegration. If there be one form of zymotic disease that might appear to have established a claim to spe- cificity it is small-pox. The constant and well-1 defined character of the eruption, the many cen- i