An inquiry into the curability of consumption, the prevention and the progress of improvement in the treatment / by James Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, James, 1818-1897.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the curability of consumption, the prevention and the progress of improvement in the treatment / by James Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    climate will often stimulate the constitutional powers, and enable them to carry forward the improvement, after the remedial means by which it had been accomplished have ceased to be of further service. On the other hand, where there is much disorganization of one or of both lungs, and the disease appears still to be advancing, so that the patient must necessarily during winter keep chiefly in the house, the comforts of home and the society of friends will be often found more valuable than a change to a slightly milder chmate. In those advanced cases, where there is reason to apprehend that the disease will steadily advance in spite of any treatment, the patient should not on any account be removed from home. We now proceed to point out the medicinal as well as dietetic means, to be employed for the purpose of cor- recting derangements of the digestive organs, and invig- orating and restoring all the nutritive functions. Though the derangement of nutrition seems to be more in the secondary processes, we often find that there is loss of appetite, and other signs of impau^ed digestive power, on the part of the stomach itself. For the purpose of rousing all the nutritive functions, it is very desirable that a complete change should be made in the habits and occupation of the patient; but it is also most necessary that any derangement of the secre- tions should be rectified by suitable remedies, and that the digestive powers should then be roused and the appe- tite improved by appropriate tonics. In some cases we find that the tongue is quite clean and the bowels regular, and there appears to be merely inactivity of the functions of the stomach, with loss of tone' and want of appetite, without other evident derangement. In others we find the same want of appetite and tone, along with a sluggish state of the bowels; but there is a third class of cases in which we find the secretions deranged, and the tongue