Consumption; its early and remediable stages.

  • Smith, Edward, 1818?-1874.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Consumption; its early and remediable stages. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    103/484 (page 79)
    from our inquiries upon persons in health we find that 19£ grs. of carbon are expired daily in quietude to each pound of body-weight, and as the average weight of these patients was 135 lb. the total daily elimination of carbon in health may be estimated at 6 oz. daily, and in a state of disease at five- sixths of that amount. Hence the amount of vapour eliminated by the skin and lungs was about 40 oz. per day, and this abstracted from the body nearly 40000 times as much heat as was held latent by that quantity of fluid when within the body. Hence in the class of cases now under consideration we find the skin unusually active and abstracting heat rapidly from the body, when, at the same time, there is less transformation of nutriment than occurs in health, and consequently less heat produced within the body. As a necessary result the temperature of the body is reduced, the hands and feet become cold, and the depression and exhaustion of the nervous power ensues which is known to occur with excess of cold of the body. In an inquiry made upon 1000 phthisical patients, we found that 54 per cent, were constitu- tionally liable to coldness of the extremities. Of these 4'8 per cent, suffered from coldness of the hands, and 19'1 per cent, from coldness of the feet alone; whilst in 30'2 per cent, that condition affected both the extremities in the same person. This was observed in states of so-called health, but it must be much in excess of the frequency occurring in robust con- stitutions.