Surgery and its adaptation into homopathic practice / by William T. Helmuth.

  • Helmuth, William Tod, 1833-1902.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgery and its adaptation into homopathic practice / by William T. Helmuth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    cumscribed and the pain throbbing. In morbid growths and in tubercle the objective symptoms are different, nor is there much pain nor increase of heat. In other varieties of abnormal growth the appearances again are dissimilar, and the pains are acute and lancinating. Inflammation of the lining membrane of the larynx is admitted to be quite different from inflamma- tion of the lining membrane of the trachea. Inflammation, seated in the same tissue of the same organ, assumes at differ- ent times different characters, as is observed in cutaneous affections. How are these differences to be understood and encountered ? Can they all be grouped together and treated as that pathological condition termed inflammation ? If sys- tems of medicine and not the law of simile be true, they ought to be so understood and treated, and the successful result of such practice would confirm the truth of the systems. But they are not treated upon any general principle. In diseases of the dermoid system, the chief reliance is reposed upon what are termed specifics. An impartial mind can entertain no other idea, than that the different subjective symptoms as exhibited, for example, in different varieties of pain, such as tearing, burning, darting, lancinating, pressive, piercing, boring, are the result of essentially different morbid actions; each one, there- fore, of necessity requiring its appropriate remedy. To these differences a critical attention must be given for the most suc- cessful application of means. It is unpardonable ignorance at the present time, when the bright rays of true medicine are illuminating our pathway with floods of light, to have an imperfect knowledge only of symptoms, and to confound all distinctions. The consequences of inflammation are often more conspicuous than the disease itself; as, for example, suppuration, ulcera- tion, granulation, and.gangrene, in all of which the symptoms of inflammation are thrown into the shade, as it were, by the remarkable features peculiar to each, and therefore the treat- ment of the disease, in all its phases, can only be rightly under- stood by one who is well acquainted with the nature of these different conditions. As it is, in general, a most desirable