Manual of pathological anatomy / by C.Handfield Jones and Edward H. Sieveking edited by Joseph Frank Payne.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of pathological anatomy / by C.Handfield Jones and Edward H. Sieveking edited by Joseph Frank Payne. 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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    a point which, has been excellently illustrated by Professor Simon. He remarks that many unnatui-al or diseased conditions are not really unnatural in themselves, but are the proper and necessary consequences of some cause or influence which has acted upon a healthy body. The state of skin which a severe burn produces is, certainly, very unnatural and diseased, hut the inflammatory and exudative processes which have produced it are quite natural, under the circumstances that have occurred; they are the proper reaction of a healthy organism to the unnatural stimulus of extreme heat, and are called forth in the same way as is the healthy flow of blood into a chilled part by the action of kindly warmth. So in a case of variola, the skin covered all over with unsightly pustules is in a very unnatural state ; but it is not the eruption, nor the constitutional disturbance, neither, that is really unnatural, hut the presence of a certain quantity of infec- tious matter in the blood, which, acting on a perfectly natural system, thus calls forth its expulsive efforts. If we shghtly alter this perfectly natural state, as by premising vaccination, then the introduction of the variolous poison no longer produces the same morbid effects, and we say the system is protected. Ihe tact is, the system is changed from its originally perfectly natural condi- tion, and will no longer respond to the unnatural stimulus. We find! it may he, a portion of the brain so soft as to resemble cream, quite broken up and disorganized; hut we look further and And that the artery supplying it with blood has been plugged up or tied and we then see that the locus of the disease was not really in the brain, but in the artery; it would have been abnormal had the brain, deprived of its supply of blood, retained its natural texture. Or, again, we see a person suffering from violent epileptic convulsions, hut he passes a large worm from the bowels and the attacks cease; in the. case of this individual, the convulsions were the natural expression of the unnatural irritation to which the brain was subjected. Many like instances might he men- tioned, and they certainly show that disease is, very often, not to he regarded as a special entity of a peculiar, strange kind, hut as the natural result of the endowments and qualities belonging to our bodily organs, when those organs are acted on by certain unnatural stimuli. Hence we can better understand that many diseases have a regular and normal course, made up “ ^ roeak, of a succession of necessary results, which however, is hable to he disturbed by various extrinsic causes. I or instance, a person has ague, the paroxysms occurring in regular succession ; be takes quinine, and they diminish and disappear, the course of morbid action is interfered with and broken. Or, a child has hooping- cough, and the disease is proceeding in its usual course, but in consequence of exposure to cold, ho is attacked with inflammation of the lungs, and the paroxysms characteristic ot the disease are, to a groat degree, interrupted; the hooping-cough is merge the pneumonia. Or, again, a person has tubercular deposit in his