Consumption, as engendered by rebreathed air and consequent arrest of the unconsumed carbonaceous waste : its prevention and possible cure / by Henry Mac Cormac.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption, as engendered by rebreathed air and consequent arrest of the unconsumed carbonaceous waste : its prevention and possible cure / by Henry Mac Cormac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    as Praeger writing to me from the Hague observed, than at home. The results are relatively bad in respect of all exclusive indoor callings. Of those who exercise them, at least five times as many labour under tubercle as is the case with those who lead active outdoor lives. Alas, everywhere evil habits and unwholesome requirements carry off our hapless species in countless numbers ere their time. Tubercle, in other words the arrested because unburnt carbonaceous waste, is the substance and no other whose presence entails consumption and scrofula in every degree. It is the very essence and indoles of these maladies, their sufficient reason and sole material cause, for without tubercle there can be no scrofula, and without unburnt carbon there can be no tubercle. Tubercle in fact is no other that the arrested because unoxidised carbonaceous waste, in fine the detained rnetamorphic refuse of the living organism, detained by reason of imperfect defective respiratory function. This detained waste gathers in the blood, and when the blood can no longer hold it, for its powers in this respect are limited, it is laid down per force in the living tissues deranging their action and causing rottenness and decay. Tubercle induces not merely scrofulous outbreaks and consumption proper, but also occasions eruptions about the ears and nose, otorrhoea, tarsal and general ophthalmia, cutaneous and subcutaneous deposits and structural changes, articular destruction, burrowing abscesses beneath the scapula loins limbs and abdominal integuments, the psoas and other muscles, tubercular lodgments in the hands feet, the bodies and cartilages of the vertebrae, the pelvis, the long bones and their extremities, the ribs and even the skull.* It does not follow, observes a recent writer, f that a deposit of tubercle must necessarily occur in every case of scrofula.£ I can only say that without tubercular deposits there can be, there are, no * Ernzione alle orecohie, al naso e alia testa, trnnori bianchi articolari, peclartrocace, ascessi vasti alle scapole a' lombi ai psoas alle natiche e altrove, cane delle ossa del cranio, i corpi delle vertebra, la sostanza delle coste, i muscoli de moti voluntari. Bufalini, Patologia Analitica, Pesaro 1830, Tomo ii., p. 416, 424. t Holmes, System of Swgery, Lond. 1860, Vol. I. p. 336. % Id. p. 337.