Severest anaemias, their infective nature, diagnosis and treatment / by William Hunter.

  • William Hunter
Date:
1909-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Severest anaemias, their infective nature, diagnosis and treatment / by William Hunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    however caused, take on its features provided only that it grows steadily worse, proves unamenable to treatment, and terminates fatally ? Nosology, and Etiology. The problem which the disease has continued to present throughout its whole history was never more clearly stated than in the words of its first observer, Dr. Combe (1822), viz. :— “A very peculiar disease. . . . Unfortunately, how¬ ever, such is the allowable diversity of opinion on most medical subjects, that it is very possible that the following case (disease) may be viewed in different lights, and receive different appellations ; and while some may be disposed to regard this anaemia as constituting a morbid state sui generis, others may consider the defect in the red circulatory mass (so extreme that every organ in the body, with the single exception of the spleen, was deprived of its red blood), as an accidental and occasional circumstance denoting some peculiar change in the assimilative powers, the primary stages of which we have been unable to detect. Doubtful myself which of the two opinions may be the most correct, I shall do little more than state correctly the phenomena of the case, and minutely the appearances presented on dissection. One remark only I may at present offer, that if any train of symptoms may be allowed to constitute anaemia a generic disease, the following may be considered an example of it in its most idiopathic form.” No less definite was the attitude assumed by Addison. In his earliest communications (1849), as in his later (1855), there is from first to last no obscurity as to the precise limits of his knowledge, the relation of his observations to those of others, or the exact view which he took of this anaemia. The chief feature in this disease which arrested his attention was its occurrence “ without any discoverable cause whatever . . . apart from the usual causes of the anaemic state, and without any organic lesion that could properly or reasonably be assigned as the cause of such serious consequences.” The main character of the original English conception was, thus, the necessity of separating this particular anaemia from the common forms of anaemia producible by various causes. It was an altogether special form—“Anaemia in its most idiopathic form” (Combe) ; a u remarkable form of anaemia—a very remark¬ able disease ” (Addison). I have defined the nature of the original English conception. The point at issue between this conception and that involved in
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