On the diseases of females, a treatise illustrating their symptoms, causes, varieties, and treatment, including the diseases and management of pregnancy and lying-in women. Designed as a companion to the author's "Modern domestic medicine." Containing also an appendix on the proper principles of the treatment of epilepsy, an account of the symptoms and treatment of diseases of the heart and a medical glossary / By Thomas J. Graham.

  • Graham, Thomas John, 1795?-1876.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases of females, a treatise illustrating their symptoms, causes, varieties, and treatment, including the diseases and management of pregnancy and lying-in women. Designed as a companion to the author's "Modern domestic medicine." Containing also an appendix on the proper principles of the treatment of epilepsy, an account of the symptoms and treatment of diseases of the heart and a medical glossary / By Thomas J. Graham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The subject of Sympathy is an important one in medical science, and by attention to it we are enabled to explain many symptoms in the diseases of women, without wlbch we should be at a loss for an explanation. Numerous sympathies exist in a condition of health: as the sympathy between the skin and mucous membrane of the digestive organs, between the womb and breast, and the womb and stomach, &c. There are also morbid or diseased sympathies, which arise in consequence of one part having undergone some alteration in structure or action, whereby sympathy is excited in another. Instances of morbid sympathy are continually presented to the eye of the medical practitioner, and a severe case of intes- tinal disorder now under my directions, brings forcibly to my recollection a very common example; namely, irritation in the mouth or lips, or in the rectum, from disorder in the stomach or intestines. The stomach and bowels are organs so highly organized, and so important, that they speedily excite a sym- pathetic irritation in distant parts when under disorder them- selves ; and it is worthy of particular remark, that this irritation generally corresponds in severity with the internal disorder which gives rise to it'; thus, in the mild cases of stomachic or intestinal disorder, a slight itchiness, redness, or pain, will be produced in the lips, gums, or other parts of the mouth, or in the rectum, while the severer cases of the former affection will induce considerable dryness, itchiness, inflammation, or perhaps ulceration in the latter parts. Of course, the sympathetic irri- tation excited by disorder or disease of the digestive organs, is not confined to the mouth and rectum, nor indeed to any part or parts, for there is not a single part, even from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, which has not been seen affected, as a consequence of disorder of the important organs of digestion. In the severest instances, the sympathetic action set up may lead to deep or extensive ulceration, peculiar and almost intolerable irritation, inflammation, or pain. It will be expected, even by unprofessional persons, that morbid or diseased sympathy exists between parts affected by the sympathies of health; but it is also met with in parts between which, in health, there is no evidence of any sympa- thy. For example: a pain in the shoulder attends a diseased or disordered state of the liver; but no one, whilst the liver is