A protest and appeal, or a brief consideration of certain errors in regard to the pathology and treatment of ulcerative inflammation of the spine, commonly called "Pott's disease" / by Benjamin Lee.

  • Lee, Benjamin, 1833-1913.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A protest and appeal, or a brief consideration of certain errors in regard to the pathology and treatment of ulcerative inflammation of the spine, commonly called "Pott's disease" / by Benjamin Lee. 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.)

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    der the intruder innocuous? Why then should those who believe in the tubercular essentiality of the disease in question adopt this singular mode of attack in this instance alone ? But there are those who deny this essentiality —who say that caries of the spine does not neces- sarily presuppose a vice of the constitution—who claim, on the contrary, that in the vast majority of cases it is the result of local injury, sometimes, it is true, aided and aggravated by a defective condition of the nutrition at the time of its re- ceipt, but yet primarily traumatic in its origin— the local irritation induciny the cachexia, and not dependent upon or resulting from it. That a circumscribed focus of irritation, the result of ex- ternal injury, is fully capable of inducing a purely cachectic condition even in the most robust indi- vidual, what one of our army surgeons, who has before his mind's eye the sad scenes of the past four years, doubts? Indeed, our most reliable recent authorities go so far as to question the possibility of the existence of tubercular deposits in bone. Mr. Barwell, in his Treatise on Dis- eases of the Joints,'' says, (p. 231,) Tuberculous deposit in bone is, I believe, very rare; when it does occur, it is a result, and not a cause of ostei- tis. He continues—Dr. Cornelius Black has published some observations on what he terms ' tuberculous bone,' but he has described under that name what T believe to be filling of the can-