Manual of pathology and practice of medicine / by Samuel Henry Dickson.

  • Dickson, Samuel Henry, 1798-1872.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of pathology and practice of medicine / by Samuel Henry Dickson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    24/260
    resuscitation. Interment in cities or populous towns, should be strictly prohibited; the ancient practice of burning dead bodies, ought on many accounts to be preferred, wherever practicable. The Phenomena of Disease demand the most assiduous attention as forming the basis of Diagnosis and Prognosis in every case. They divide themselves naturally into two groups, the objective and the subjective. Those are objective which the physician may himself observe and estimate: those subjective, the existence and degree of which he can know only from the patient. It should be our constant effort to enlarge the extent of the first series, and to render the inferences from them more clear and precise. In many cases we must depend on them exclusively, as in the diseases of infants, idiots and suspected malingerers. In some maladies we are thrown upon the second series almost entirely, as in neuralgia and other affections of which pain is the chief element. Considered practically, diseases are mere collections of symptoms, the proximate or common cause of which is exceedingly obscure and difficult to be traced. These phenomena may, in this place, be con- sidered in the order of the physiological systems and functions which they disturb or affect, and their rationale attempted to be given. I. Of the Digestive System.—Its disorders are shown by 1st. Alterations in the appearance and conditions of those portions of the system which it is in our power to examine. The tongue is furred, or covered with a morbid mucous coating, when the stomach and bowels are deranged and their secretions vitiated. It is red, and sore, and ulcerated, when they are inflamed. In fevers it is swollen, and sodden, and variously discolored on the sides and surface, if the stomach is irritated and the hepatic actions disturbed. In typhoid affec- tions it is dry and of a dark hue; covered with a tenacious sordes or chapped. It is cold in cholera and pale. In purpura and the hemor- rhagic state of fever, it is livid and smooth, and exudes blood. Its papillae protrude, of a bright crimson tinge, in scarlatina. The gums are spongy, swollen, and disposed to bleed in scurvy, purpura, and in the hemorrhagic forms of fever. The lips, cheeks, and the whole lining membrane of the mouth are apt to ulcerate—especially in chil- dren—when the mucous tissue of the stomach and intestines is ir- ritated. The teeth and gums as well as the tongue are blackened by sordes in typhus. The abdomen should be explored. Meteorism is shewn by tension or intumescence, light and resonant upon percussion; by fluctuation