The motive power of the human system : with the symptoms and treatment of chronic diseases / by H.H. Sherwood.

  • Sherwood, H. H. (Henry Hall)
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The motive power of the human system : with the symptoms and treatment of chronic diseases / by H.H. Sherwood. 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 natural remedies for this class of diseases with great success during a period of more than twenty-five years. In describing the cases, which I have introduced, to illustrate the new symptoms, and the action of the natural remedies for them, I have been as brief as possible, purposely avoiding reports of the state of the pulse, and other unimportant symptoms not necessarily belonging to the disease. Many of these are new cases not before published in my former medical work, which accompanied the remedies, and give a fair view of their con- tinued progress in the cure of this class of diseases. A great majority of the cases were first treated by other physicians, and besides mercury and iodine, had been under the use of a great variety of other remedies, and when these failed, many of the patients had re- sorted to root, steam, charm, Indian and cancer doctors, and to an endless variety of elixirs of health, purifiers of the blood, cough drops, pana-' ceas, catholicons, and Indian specifics, and continued their use until they became satisfied of the futility of such remedies. Some of these patients had taken from one to thirteen bottles ot Swaim's Panacea, a compound of syrup of sarsaparilla and muriate of mercury, in imitation of the long known Lisbon diet drink. And al- though, from its frequent failure, very little dependance is now placed upon it, there can be no doubt that it sometimes exercises a favourable influence upon this class of diseases. It will be observed by those who are acquainted with the classification of diseases, that I have added to the common and acknowledged cases of scrofula, a number of diseases not classed as such by nosologists or other medical writers ; and I have done so, because the symptoms and the disorganizations, presented by dissections, are identical and uniform ; and moreover, because they can always be cured by the same remedies, which demonstrate the unity of chronic diseases of this class, by which the practice is greatly simplified, and a knowledge of it easily attained. I have substituted the term tubercvJa, from tuber, a knot, knob, or little swelling, for scrofula, a little pig ; because there is a manifest similar- ity between the verbal sign and the thing signified in the one selection, and apparently none in the other. The disease is a swelling of the knobs, or little round organised bodies called lymphatic glands, pervading every part of the body with consequent hypertrophy, or general swelling of the organs, limbs, and other structures