The new treatment by isotonic plasma (modified sea water) / by a physician.

  • Physician.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The new treatment by isotonic plasma (modified sea water) / by a physician. 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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    Plate VII. The little patient had been in this unsightly condition for six years. We saw her in the clinic in October of last year, with the very presentable head of hair shown in Plate VIII. It had required two years treatment to bring this about ; but the mass of hair is probably as much as would have grown in two years in a state of health. That is, the progress had probably been continuous. These examples, taken from some thousands of carefully recorded cases in the records of M. Quinton’s clinics, convey some idea of the wide range of Plasma Therapeutics. In one type of case, the quantities of Plasma necessary, and their prolonged repetition, appear to indicate the method of cure as one of direct supply of the normal saline constituents of the blood, which the organism seems unable to derive continu- ously from the usual sources. In yet another type of case, the small doses requisite to cure, and the immediate aggravation wrought by over-dose, warrant the view that the curative process is due to active selection, from the traces of metallic elements in the Plasma, of the appropriate metal or salt in the infin- itesimal quantity present. Let it be remembered that the numerous elements, in bulk or in trace, present in animal tissues, are exactly those existing, in bulk or in trace, in Isotonic Plasma. A wider view is thus opened out of the protective mechanism of the body against disease—for what active part other than protective can the infinitesimal fractions of the rarer elements play in animal tissues ?—and the stimulation of such protective mechanisms when the appropriate elements, in natural infinitesimal quantity, are intro- duced in a state of nature into the organism. But, however we may speculate on methods, the facts are there.