Chronic diseases and their remedies, or, Pathogenetic practice of medicine : embracing chemico-pathology and the symptoms and treatment of chronic diseases by pathogenetic remedies : designed for the use of patients / by E.W. Tucker.

  • Tucker, E. W.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chronic diseases and their remedies, or, Pathogenetic practice of medicine : embracing chemico-pathology and the symptoms and treatment of chronic diseases by pathogenetic remedies : designed for the use of patients / by E.W. Tucker. 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.)

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    the air-cells is substantially tlie same, and its progress the same, from whatever cause produced. This has usually been described as the first stage of con- sumption, but we regard it the second. The Jirst stage consists of those constitutional changes which produce this local inflammatory condition of the lungs, for the local affection is the result of constitutional changes in diges- tion or the nutritive functions, which are very gradual in their approach, and may be operating for years before cough or expectoration announces that the substance of the lung is inflamed and the air-cells closed and hardened. The Jirst stage of consumption dates from the time the stomach fails to digest the fat or animal oils used in food, which deprives the system of one of its principal elements of support. Such being the case, the effect of this defi- ciency of animal fat explains the very first symptom usually noticed—that is, emaciation, and a slight feeling of weak- ness, with an uneasy sensation—not confined to any par- ticular part—with an irritable condition of the system— not a fever proper, but what is generally called feverish- ness. Now, are not all of these disturbances of the gen- eral health just such as every person experiences, while restricted to a less amount of food than the system requires? Are they not such as invariably attend short rations, or starvation ? Precisely so, and in nearly every particular; the only difference being that the famishing person does not eat the food at all, while the consumptive does, but from the impaired condition of the digestive organs it is permitted to pass out of the body unappro- priated its to inourishment. Hence, we often hear it said