On the pathology and treatment of acute rheumatism : being the Lumleian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853 / by James Alderson.

  • Alderson, James, 1795-1882.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology and treatment of acute rheumatism : being the Lumleian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853 / by James Alderson. 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.

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    Of all practices in medicine, bleeding has been most capriciously adopted. None is more valuable, none more dangerous. In some cases it has been carried to terrific extent; in a vast number wholly neglected, when its application might not only have met the existing symptoms, but have saved a long series of supervening evils. The reason to be assigned for this is, that venesection has been hitherto adopted to meet symptoms which are patent to the eye; and as it is now known that symptoms which are similar may arise from very dissimilar causes, and during different states of the blood and secretions, it is not to be wondered at that grave mistakes and irreparable failures have often been apparent, and that the prac- tice has fallen into disfavour. The best of us have at times pursued it, guided by no more certain light than a practical knowledge of the circumstances under which it may be safely trusted; and I believe in the use of this, as well as of other remedies, all have felt, with pain, that they have had to substitute skiU for science. But perhaps rheumatism, under the assumption that the views which we have held out are correct, affords the best-known instance of a disease in which bleeding might be apphed or withheld on solid prin- ciples, that is, in which something of an exact know- ledge might be obtained of the nature of the effects produced by depletion, so as to judge of the time when G 2