Lectures on diseases of the kidney, generally known as 'Bright's disease'; and dropsy / by S.J. Goodfellow.

  • Goodfellow, S. J. (Stephen Jennings)
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases of the kidney, generally known as 'Bright's disease'; and dropsy / by S.J. Goodfellow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    results with regard to this influence of organization in the two sexes, because most of the females admitted are exposed to the same exciting causes, and to as great an extent, as the males. After scarlatina, and therefore generally in young subjects, there are, speaking roughly, as many females as males. ' ✓ Climate has an undoubted influence. All writers agiee that a cold and humid, and above all a variable climate, is a very powerful predisposing cause. Yet these diseases are not unfrequent among the natives of a tropical climate. In seeking for the probable causation of any of these kidney affections, you ought not to expect to discover it in one solitary agent. It is assuredly a very inade- quate description of the process to say that (what it is convenient to call) a poison enters the blood from without, or is generated within, the body, and in passing through the kidneys exerts its poisonous or damaging influence upon the epithelial cells, which, in eliminating the offending agent, become vanquished, die, and are cast off like any other dead matter. The process is not, I take it, so simple as this description would lead you to suppose. I shall, as I proceed, place before you the main points to which you should direct your attention for the purpose of discovering the manner m which the several assigned causes probably acc. The various tissues and fluids of the body being healthy, a poison, whether introduced from without or