On disease of the supra-renal capsules, or, morbus Addisoni / by Samuel Wilks, M.D.

  • Samuel Wilks
Date:
[1862?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On disease of the supra-renal capsules, or, morbus Addisoni / by Samuel Wilks, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    other hand, it may be said that the disease is of so striking a character, aud accompanied by so remarkable symptoms, that when any practitioner has met with a single case, he has been so struck with its peculiarities that he has become at once a convert; since withi the light of a post-mortem examina- tion the case could bear no other explanation than the one attempted. My first idea in commencing this paper was to collect all the cases which had been recorded, and thus by a formidable array of facts produce an overwhelming credit in favour of the discovery. On my attempt, however, to do so, I found cases not sufficiently well reported, or the necroscopic inspections too vague to enable me to make use of them with justice to the subject; and on a second intention, to select other and better authenticated cases, I found I should be adopting a system which might be open to the imputation of unfairness. I have, therefore, been reduced to the plan of putting before my readers the few cases which have been brought under ray own notice, or, having been well made out during life, or diagnosed as good examples of the disease, the organs have been sent to me for examination. The advantage of confining myself to these is, that all the specimens are preserved, and are now before me, and can be examined (by reference to the numbers), by any visitor to Guy's Hospital museum. They form a perfect series in themselves, amounting to twenty-five in number, and present an array of facts which cannot, I think, be withstood. I must state that many of these cases have already been published, and are found scattered through the medical journals. In order to place before my readers the subject as it at present stands, with the latest light I can throw upon it, I cannot, as I should have wished, simply detail the symptoms of the disease, and offer my conclusions upon it in the manner which is usually adopted in a treatise on an established form of disease, but I must necessarily be discursive; for in dissect- ing Addison's work, in order to discover where the truth lies, and where the error, a controversial or critical style cannot be avoided. General features of the disease.—In the first place, the important features of the disease as enforced by Addison, are
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