The treatment of constitutional syphilis / by Oswald Ziemssen.

  • Ziemssen, Oswald.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of constitutional syphilis / by Oswald Ziemssen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    can he be prepared to cope successfully with all the contingencies that may arise in the course of treat ment ? This is why patients suffering from syphilis are the best tests of a practitioner’s general pro- fessional training, a point which might well receive more attention at the Universities. As syphilis may attack the most diverse organs, patients suffering from it unquestionably afford the best material for the “ all round” development of a young physician, as the disease compels him to give full attention to every organ in the patient whom he is treating. Moreover, the multiplication of specialists who treat single organs, as the skin, the larynx, etc., is a serious obstacle to the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of the disease as a whole. Patients con- sult different practitioners for the various manifesta- tions of syphilis, so that few, if any, medical men have the opportunity of following a case in all its phases, and so studying the disease as a general constitutional infection, not merely as a cause of specific lesions in a particular organ. Having had the opportunity of carefully examining many patients, I have often been able to say that different “ single- organ specialists ” (sit venia verbo) have been con- sulted for the different symptoms of the same disease. The initial sore or commencing induration had first sent the patient to thesyphilologists and skin specialists, and pharyngeal ulceration had next led him to seek the advice of a laryngologist. Later on, however—if for instance some affection of the nervous system or visceral syphilis makes its appearance—how is the patient to know that his complaint is syphilitic? He