The treatment of obstinate ulcers and cutaneous eruptions on the leg without confinement / by Henry T. Chapman.

  • Chapman, Henry T. (Henry Thomas), 1806-1874.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of obstinate ulcers and cutaneous eruptions on the leg without confinement / by Henry T. Chapman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    feeble resistance of their own delicate walls to op- pose to the pressure from within. If the distension thus produced be not arti- ficially counteracted, the nearly stagnant blood being quite unfit for any healthy operation, exuda- tion of plastic lymph ceases, the new vessels them- selves are gradually absorbed, and the sore at length acquires an indolent or atonic habit. This may be received, in fact, as the natural history of chronic ulcer on the leg; since, if left to itself, whatever other phases it may pass through before it reaches the atonic stage, to this favour will it come at last. It is immaterial, says Sir -Everard Home, whether in its origin an ulcer was healthy, weak, or irritable; if not cured within a certain time, it becomes indolent.* LOCAL SOURCES OF IRRITABILITY. But the mischief arising from this state of me- chanical congestion is not confined to the blood- vessels. The nerves associated with them, op- pressed and irritated by their over-distension, are not merely incapacitated for the healthy discharge of their share in the reparative function, but are kept by it in a greater or less degree of morbid sen- sibility. This amounts, in many cases, to something more than a transient affection, symptomatic of the * Practical Observations on Ulcers of the Leg, p. 189.