On the pathology of delirium tremens : and its treatment without stimulants or opiates / by Alexander Peddie.

  • Peddie, Alexander, 1810-1907.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology of delirium tremens : and its treatment without stimulants or opiates / by Alexander Peddie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    envelope of a particular individual, we ought to find a greater irre- gularity in their development in the same shell, and asks why, if this theory were true, should the heights of different coils of the same spiral present constant relations, and why the first and last cells should he less large than those of the median whorls, we cannot accept the objections, for a crowd of comparable phaenomena pre- sented by the Sertularian zoophytes, animals having considerable affinity with the Polyzoa, although of higher organization, come to our recollection. The variations of the Hydroida, their morpho- logy and reproduction, bear tooj close a relation to the phsenomena exhibited by the rhizopodous organism, to permit us to regard the Nummulite and its allies as simple bodies, or to dispute the theory of their gemmigerous constitution ; in other words, the regulation of their organization by the law of paramorphosis. The stratigraphical distribution of the Nummulites is especially of interest to the geologist. As compared with the grand scale of epochs, their reign was short, but it was well-marked and compact, and offers but one more proof to the thousands now known towards the demonstration of the unity of time-areas of natural genera, facts that should make us strongly hesitate before admitting the value of apparent and daily-decreasing exceptions, and that should give us fresh hope of the future attainment of a knowledge of the grand laws re- gulating life in its relations to time, and fresh faith in the biological section of the foundations of geology. The Nummulites characterize a portion, not the whole, of the tertiary epoch. Though once, and not many years ago, Nummulites were regarded to be as probably in- dicative of the cretaceous date of a formation as of its tertiary place, it would now appear that, between the nummulitic tertiaries and true cretaceous strata, deposits intervene, whose fauna and flora are such that we must regard them as of tertiary age. A most interesting and important feature of these deposits, traceable in the north-west of Europe, the south of France, in Savoy, in Switzerland, along the southern slopes of the Alps, in Istria, and even in India, is, that in numerous localities they exhibit evidences of a terrestrial origin, marked by the presence of coal, often accompanied by lacustrine shells, and sometimes by freshwater limestones. In facts of this kind we may get at the true explanation of the break between the cretaceous and tertiary faunas, without having recourse to prodigious cataclysms or paroxysmal elevations of mountain chains, which, if they did occur, as might have been the case, could have made far less im- pression on the distribution of animal and vegetable life, except in the immediate vicinity of the convulsion, than slow and almost imperceptible changes affecting gradually the disposition of the geo- graphy of a wide-spread area. The dial moves, and yet it is not seen, paradoxically writes an old poet. Time cannot progress without change, however slow may seem his course. The true measure of the extent and importance of a convulsion (as well as of the importance of unconformity), should be the amount of organic change that we can trace to a connexion e 2