On pyæmia : read before the Medical Society of University College, November 25th, 1852 / by Joseph S. Gamgee, Esq.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On pyæmia : read before the Medical Society of University College, November 25th, 1852 / by Joseph S. Gamgee, Esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    subject of my thesis, and to giving a succinct account of the disease. In so doing, it shall be my special study to adduce from my note-book of cases as much evidence in support of my statements and of my criticism on accepted opinions, as time will permit. Anxious as I am to be brief, I cannot abstain from making a few preliminary remarks. Such is the present state and rate of progress of patho- logical science in general, but especially of surgical pathology, that even in the humblest of inquiring minds, a zealous desire to do somewhat to contribute to its ad- vancement cannot but be awakened. If this be true in general, how true is it in this particular instance. Let any one look on a poor creature first seized with the pysemic shiver: the violent shake of the whole body, the drawn and haggard features, the dim and sunken eye, the earthy look, the mental depression, the succeeding intense heat and pro- fuse sweating, will at once indicate to him that something serious has happened. A succession of these attacks, the supervention of diarrhoea, and mental aberration, not unfre- quently in a few hours hurl a previously stout and healthy man into eternity. Let the witness of this scene bear in mind that, but a very few years since, this disease was unknown; that there are very strong grounds for believing that it is among the most frequent of surgical diseases, and yields to none of them, if it do not exceed them all, in its fatality ; that at the present day, to my certain knowledge, surgeons of eminence have shewn themselves ignorant of typical cases of this disease brought under their observation; that in the most recent systems of surgery, strong presumptive evidence is afforded in favour of the belief that their authors have exceedingly indefinite notions on the subject; that writers of monographs are not only remarkably at variance on some of the most important, nay, of the fundamental questions