Practical observations on mineral waters and baths; with notices of some continental climates, and a reprint (the third) of the Cold-water cure / by Edwin Lee.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on mineral waters and baths; with notices of some continental climates, and a reprint (the third) of the Cold-water cure / by Edwin Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    in females is more watery than in males, and that of children and old people is always more so than in healthy adults. An abnormal condition of the blood may depend upon various causes, as when transmitted from parents, in debilitated subjects, from breathing a vitiated air, from deficiency or excess of food, or from its bad quahty. A bad alimentation forms bad chyle, hence, the blood becomes altered from its healthy state. How often, for instance, has it not occurred that damaged rice or rye has changed the condition of the blood, so far as to produce gangrene of the extremities. A too exclusive nourishment with animal food, by increasing the relative quantity of fibrine, renders the blood too rich, and thus disposes to gravel, gout, and inflammatory diseases. So long, however, as the vital energy of the economy is suffi- cient for the regular accomplishment of the functions, noxious matters rarely accumulate in the blood to such an extent as to alter it, but if any influence arises to depress this energy when the blood is already imperfectly formed, or insufficiently animalized and purified, and consequently when some of its elements are modified in their quantity or quahty, disorders arise which terminate either in the ehmination of noxious matters, or by a series of pathological actions and organic lesions,* The influence of the chemical action of substances introduced into the economy though great, must not, however, be over-estimated, to which there is a ten- dency in the present day; that of the dynamic or vital powers in controlling this action, not being always sufficiently considered, for operations do not take place in the living body as in a laboratory; but m proportion as the vital powers decline, chemical actions and affinities come more freely into play. Alterations in the Quantity, quality, and chemical composition ot * L'Heritier Chemie Pathologique. Paris, 1842.