Oral sepsis as a cause of "septic gastritis," "toxic neuritis" and other septic conditions : with illustrated cases / by William Hunter.

  • Hunter, William.
Date:
1901
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Oral sepsis as a cause of "septic gastritis," "toxic neuritis" and other septic conditions : with illustrated cases / by William Hunter. 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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    hypertrophy of glands, arthritic rheuiimtism, exposure to cold, sudden changes in temperature, septic poisoning from bad drainage, injury by a spicule of bone, or by mechanical injury ; sometimes even the presence of calcareous cheesy masses in the crypts. Every possible factor is thus noted, including in not a few cases septic poisoning from bad drainage. But no mention is made of a source of septic poisoning far more common than bad drainage—viz., dental cario-necrosis with its septic conditions adjacent to the tonsils themselves. Such conditions are at least extremely proximate sources of infection, one always ready to avail itself of any weakening of the powers of resistance by the other factors mentioned. The omission to recognise this possible source of infection is the more remarkable as the tonsils are more and more beinff o recognised as themselves possible channels of infection, both pyogenic and tuberculous. A liability to recurrent attacks of sore throat is one of the conditions I have observed associated with long-standing septic stomatitis. (4) Pharyngitis.—In well-marked cases of stomatitis the general reddening is not limited to the gums, but invariably extends over the mucosa of the cheeks, the soft palate, and backwards on to the pharynx. A condition ]^haryngitis exists—acute or chronic catarrh, according to the severity of its cause. This pharyngitis, like the accompanying stomatitis, is, I con- sider, a part result of the sepsis prevailing within the mouth. Like the latter, it is got rid of by removal of the causes of this sepsis (necrosed teeth and septic stomatitis). It is thus in my experience an invariable accompaniment of the conditions of gastric disturbances— septic gastric catarrh, as I term it—which, as I have shown, is one of the commonest effects of the oral sepsis. The pharyngitis may thus be considered to be septic in origin, just as the stomatitis and the gastritis are. This relation of certain forms of pharyngitis to oral sepsis is one that I find no mention of in the literature of the subject. Its causes are considered to be in the acute forin : idiopathic, exposure to cold, damp; diathetic, the poisons of rheumatism