An essay on the principal causes which unite in producing and diffusing disease : being the address in medicine, read before the Seventeenth Annual General Meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Worcester, August 1st and 2nd, 1849 / by Charles William Bell.

  • Bell, Charles William, 1811?-1862.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the principal causes which unite in producing and diffusing disease : being the address in medicine, read before the Seventeenth Annual General Meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, held at Worcester, August 1st and 2nd, 1849 / by Charles William Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/56 (page 13)
    In some diseases, such as syphilis, the material acted upon appears to he constantly reproduced along with those which are more essential to organic life; and in syphilis, the poison generated is not of that violently irritating character which requires an intensely excited action of the powers of life (or fever) to throw it off upon the less important organs. The tissues are tolerant of it to such a point that its accumulation in them will destroy their organization, not so much by an effort to throw it off, as by producing an incessant irritation; yet even here we find the vis vita resisting the morbid influence in the more vital organs, and in them no evidence of disease is to be detected, even where the deepest seated bones have suffered. This class of specific poisons has no natural means of cure, like the exanthemata, where the patient must die unless the system be immediately relieved from their irritating presence; yet experience has proved that syphilis, at least, is not beyond the means of artificial cure. The materials of its agency are not very rapidly reproduced; and it has been discovered, that by carefully restricted diet, it is possible so to reduce or cut off the supply, that for want of matter for the exciter to convert to its own poisonous condition, its action ceases, and that portion of virus which had been previously formed, will, in a few weeks, be so effectually removed from the system by the natural emunctories of the blood, as to be no longer present to renew itself when its materies is again supplied by better nourishment. We have also ascertained that certain medicines or chemical reagents, such as mercury and iodine, possess the power of so combining with, or altering this material, as to nullify the operation of the specific poison on it, so long as their influence is maintained; and that by keeping up this action for a period sufficient to allow the whole of the virus to. be eliminated by the natural emunctories, the disease will be expelled. That it is not upon the virus previously engen- dered, but upon the materies on which the virus is capable of acting, that mercury operates, appears probable from the well known fact, that the most violent effect of mercury on the system is no more effectual in hastening the cure or preventing a relapse of syphilis, than the most gentle evidences of saturation of the system ; whereas, if the exciter alone were acted upon, the larger the quantity of mercury infused into the blood, the more perfect and the more rapid would be the cure.