On the diseases of the kidney : their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment; with an introductory chapter on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by George Johnson.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases of the kidney : their pathology, diagnosis, and treatment; with an introductory chapter on the anatomy and physiology of the kidney / by George Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    a predisposition to disease. It is not improbable that a patient, who has had an attack of renal disease excited by any one of the before-mentioned causes, may be more than usually susceptible of all the influences which are known to produce the disease. For instance, that when scarlatina has been compli- cated with acute renal disease, any subsequent expo- sure to cold is more likely to injure the kidney than when there has been no previous attack of disease. I repeat, that such a result is not improbable, but I believe that the risk is very slight when the original disease has been entirely removed; a condition which has been assumed throughout.* It is of great im- portance that a patient who has once suffered from so serious a disease as acute inflammation of the kidney, should avoid, as much as possible, all the known causes of the disease; and it will be more for his advantage to adopt this reasonable caution, than to trust to any dogmatic, and therefore probably imper- fect and one-sided, decision of the obscure question, as to the exact degree in which one attack of disease in the kidney renders the organ liable to be influenced by other causes of disease. It is clearly the duty of the physician, so far as he is able, on the one hand, to relieve his patient from all needless anxiety as to the result of his disease, and on the other, to guard him against that false confidence which would lead him to neglect the care and caution, which the circum- stances of his case require. * The signs of complete recovery have been given at p. 119 and 120.