Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith.

  • Veith, Ilza.
Date:
1970, ©1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hysteria : the history of a disease / by Ilza Veith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/128 (page 11)
    as local redness does not involve all the required signs of heat, redness, pain, and svirelling, which that state requires, it cannot be true inflammation, and there is no difficulty in proving that the treatment usually adopted in true inflam- matory disease is especially objectionable and injurious in this. There is another variety of so-called inflammation, in the mouths of a large number of us called chronic; what it means is somewhat difficult to define, but we employ it rather to conceal a difficulty, than to expound it. There are two principles on which this congested con- dition of the blood-vessels may be treated ; 1. Blood may be taken locally, the system may be lowered by salines, as they are termed, by purgatives and diaphoretics. This treatment by local depletion would lead to the inference that the blood is at fault and should be removed. 2. The blood in these vessels may be forced onward by giving increased action to the heart, by the resort to agents that tend to restore the healthy tonic condition of, or, at all events, to give force to, the capillary system of the affected part. This latter is termed the tonic treatment of disease : a principle, I consider, based on a sound view of the functions of the animal economy, and which formed the staple of my treatment during the period in which I was attached to this Hospital as Surgeon, and for many years prior. If this principle be sound, treatment by depletion in any form must be an error, and therefore injurious, and that it is injurious I have not a doubt. I can speak with some confidence, for