Volume 1

Remarks on some of the opinions of the late Mr. John Hunter respecting the venereal disease; in a letter to Jeseph Adams / [Henry Clutterbuck].

  • Clutterbuck, Henry, 1767-1856
Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on some of the opinions of the late Mr. John Hunter respecting the venereal disease; in a letter to Jeseph Adams / [Henry Clutterbuck]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    application and the appearance of the symp¬ toms which characterize it, differing in dura¬ tion in the differing poisons, but, in each, according to a peculiar law. A. question here naturally arises; what becomes of the poison in this interval, and what is its mode of oper¬ ation ? Before the time of Mr. Hunter, it was commonly supposed to undergo some kind of fermentation, which, like the ferment¬ ation of saccharine substances, required a cer¬ tain length of time for its completion, and, • , i under which, it assimilated to its own nature some portion, or the whole of the animal fluids. Mr. Hunter was amongst the first to detect the fallacy of this sort of reasoning, and to point out the impropriety of applying the laws of inanimate matter to explain the pheno¬ mena of living bodies. Rejecting, therefore, this hypothesis, as de¬ void of all probability, his idea was, that in the yenereal disease, the subject of our present at¬ tention, the virus, immediately on being ab¬ sorbed, becomes universally diffused, and contaminates at once all the parts which are susceptible of venereal action ; and that it is again soon thrown forth from the system, in some or other of the excretions. This opi¬ nion undoubtedly appears consonant with our idc^s