Arteriosclerosis : a summary view / by the late T. Clifford Allbutt.

Thomas Clifford Allbutt

Date:: 1925

Credit: Arteriosclerosis : a summary view / by the late T. Clifford Allbutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

14/128 page 2

$though the arterial pressures run high, no arterio¬ sclerosis has yet become apparent; but, as Cohn ^ says, hyperpiesis is not a sub-heading under arterio¬ sclerosis So again recently we hear from an eminent professor of ‘‘ the syndrom of arteriosclerosis ”, from another of the symptoms of arteriosclerosis What are they ? We are apt to form certain fixed habits of speech and thought, habits which hinder or warp the free play of our minds ; and we hamper ourselves with abstract phrases, or are content with phylac¬ teries, such as ‘'intestinal toxins”, “compensation”,2 “ morbid entity ”, and many another which need much sifting and at least some evidence. As Prof. Oertel of Montreal says, “ Pathologists at large have not yet learned to distinguish between what is scientifically established and what is assumed ”. “ Intestinal toxins ” is one of the most pertinacious of these catch¬ words ; as some one said of another matter, “We are guessing in the dark about a guess in the dark ”. In an interesting article {Lancet, 1924, ii. 639), by Drs. J. Eason and Gr. Smith, an eminent cardiologist is quoted as saying, under the head of family pro¬ clivity to nephritis, “ that this tendency appears with a like tendency to early arterial degeneration, early cerebral haemorrhage, myocarditis, or angina pectoris . . ; and again to contracted kidneys : “ these maladies being distributed in a family, or piled upon one or more of its members ”. Indeed the authors themselves likewise hardly distinguish hyperpiesia, ^ Nelson’s Loose-Leaf Living Medicine, iv. 2 Compensation is used far too much with a teleological meaning; it is better to be content with the law of reciprocal action.$

Arteriosclerosis : a summary view / by the late T. Clifford Allbutt.

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