Copy 1

General pathology, as conducive to the establishment of rational principles for the diagnosis and treatment of disease : a course of lectures, delivered at St. Thomas's Hospital during the summer session of 1850, / by John Simon, F.R.S.

  • Simon, John, Sir, 1816-1904.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General pathology, as conducive to the establishment of rational principles for the diagnosis and treatment of disease : a course of lectures, delivered at St. Thomas's Hospital during the summer session of 1850, / by John Simon, F.R.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have cited, and among all that are known of analogous action, there is none which accurately corresponds to the operation under our notice. If, therefore, for convenience of phrase, we speak of the action of morbid poisons as a catalytic process; and if (with the Registrar-General) we speak of the numerous diseases excited by these poisons as zymotic diseases, it must be with a distinct recognition, that for such nomenclature we have extended the former applica- tion of the words, and have not demonstrated the identity of our organic processes with those chemical actions pre- viously expressed by them. With time, and with riper knowledge on the subject, this caution may become unne- cessary. Meanwhile, in employing such phrases, be careful to remember, that however suggéstive they may be as generic terms for acts having a certain obscure analogy, they do not include any explanation of the processes which they denote. From these remarks on the general nature of the infective process, I proceed to consider the material which determines its occurrence. What this material—the principle of infec- tive disorders in the human subject—may originally have been, we are totally unable to say; but, whatever may have been its first method of generation, we can now confidently speak of it as a possible product of the human body; we know that it is liable to develop itself out of some constituent of the human blood. What are these constituents? Observation and argument sufficiently show, that the blood-corpuscles* and albumen can hardly be the constituents in question: first, because, after death by zymotic disease, they are found without evident * There are some reasons for doubting whether the paludal poison may not perhaps act on the blood-corpuscles: some of the symptoms of yellow fever, and the notorious tendency of ague to produce secondary affections of the spleen, seem, though indistinctly, to point in this direction. But I confine myself in the text to diseases of animal infection, which, alone, are attended with conversion and exhaustion of materials proper to the blood. The vegetable poison of ague might, perhaps, act slowly and partially on the corpuscles of the blood; but none of the ordinary” animal zymotics could do so without betraying their action, in the manner stated above.