An inaugural dissertation on pulmonary consumption.

  • Delafield, Edward, 1794-1875.
Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on pulmonary consumption. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    64/72 (page 62)
    forded by travelling serves to divert the patient's mind from his own feelings, and adds to its beneficial tffects. Secondary Phthisis Pulm >nalis remains yet to be treated of. Under this order, should be included every form of Con- sumption, in which the system has become debilitated by any cause,'and the lungs in consequence become affected. I would exclude from it that form of the disease occurring after measles, scarlatina, and some other eruptive diseases, which I would consider as primary Phthisis Pulmonalis ; because, in those cases, the lungs do not become affected merely in consequence of debility, but these diseases stem rather to act as exciting causes, in constitutions already predisposed to Consumption ; while in secondary Phthisis, the affection of the lungs is only one symptom of the gene- ral disease, which is wasting the body. Nor would the treatment, which will be advocated in the latter form, be proper in the cases alluded to. They require that, which should be used in the first species of Phthisis, and which has already been detailed. The reason, why the lungs be- come affected in consequence of debility induced by parti- cular causes, I would not attempt to explain. It is one of those laws of the constitution, not better understood, than why particular parts are successively affected in conse- quence of syphilis, or that the breasts and lower extremities ar^ more liable to disease than other parts, except the ute- rus, in females after parturition. Many laws of this kind exist in the human constitution, of whose effects, we are every day made sensible, but of the cause of which we are tbtally ignorant.