The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    same plienomenon is exhibited in the emiitive maladies, measles, small-pox, scarlet fever, &c., 'which are but efforts of the violently ii'ritated internal parts to throw some part, at least, of their mischief upon the skin; in doing which, they involve the animal nervous system, the brain, and spinal cord. But in the chronic form the extension takes place more slowly, and a skin disease of some kind, or an ulcer, is gradually established as a sort of counter- l)oise to the irritation which would otherwise prey upon Bie vital jiarts and destroy them. That something of this obtains is plain from the fact, that whenever these chronic skin diseases or ulcers are driven in, or dried up, many serious results follow in some important viscus, such as apoplexy of the brain, spasm of the heart or stomach, spitting of blood from the lungs, &c. It is well known that Napoleon had a patch of skin disease on the outer side of one of his thighs; and that whenever he felt heavy or melancholy, or more than usually irritable in mind and uneasy in body, he had only to coax a further amount of irritation into this patch, by scratching until two or three drops of blood came, to find immediate relief And this necessity arose whenever the skin disease had diminished in degTee; that is to say, whenever the disease within had become more concentrated and intense. Sometimes this extension to the surface of the body only takes place at certain times, the internal chronic malady, meantime, always remaining there. Thus, many i)ersoiis have eruptions of various kinds in the spring, or in the autumn. Others have fulness of the mucous membrane of the nostrils, and bleeding thence at periods depending on the accidents of the patient’s mode of life. Others, again, have painful itching and bleeding haemorrhoids whenever the smallest aberration from cold diet is per- mitted; and not unfrequently without any such causes working, internal chronic disease takes this mode of re- lieving itself by extension from time to time to less important parts. One of the most harmless, but at the same time the most troublesome instances of the occa- vsional extension of chronic stomach disease, is the tender- ness of the feet^ so often complained of by dyspeptic l>atients. Swelling of tlie feet is another instance. Sound stomachs are subject to neither of these e\dls. Under this category of extension to the external organs of the body, come the important diseases, gout and rheum-