The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner.

  • Jenner, William, Sir, 1815-1898.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    an explanation of common secondary affections, but also in regulating treatment. It is now part of our daily clinical knowledge, that a very large proportion of the fatal cases of typhoid fever are fatal, not from the severity of the original disease, not from the direct secondary consequences of the original disease, but from the effects of absorption of decayed matter from the ulcerated surface of the intestine, and the blood-condi- tion, septicaemia, resulting. From this follow secondary pneumonia, nephritis, hepatitis, &c. The practical conclu- sion is that one great point in treatment is to prevent this absorption by the use of remedies calculated to destroy the foetid condition of the intestinal contents. Again, in determining a fatal result in scarlatina, septi- caemia often plays a most important part. Absorption from the ulcerated surface of the throat leads to great enlargement of the lymphatic glands about the angle of the jaw, and then to general infection. The same is true in regard of diphtheria. The practical conclusion here is that one object in treatment is to destroy the absorbing surface, (often quite practicable in scarlet fever,) and to destroy foetid matters by the use of antiseptics to the pharynx. Among our advances in the same direction, that is of the effects of the fluid blood-poisons and their conse- quences, should perhaps be classed those great strides forward in practical knowledge which have followed on our study of Bright’s disease, its relation to local inflam- mations, to cerebral haemorrhage, and to hypertrophy of the c 2