A demonstration of the origin of tubercular consumption / by Henry M'Cormac.

  • M'Cormac, Henry, 1800-1886.
Date:
[1855?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A demonstration of the origin of tubercular consumption / by Henry M'Cormac. 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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    and was long supposed to be merely a fatty, although in reality a tubercular degeneration. Eecent tubercle is mainly a hydrocarbon, composed of a cer- tain proportion of oxygen, nitrogen, and earthy salts. Accord- ing to Scherer in 100 parts recent tubercle, deprived he says of fat, which however as combined with tubercle is as much a mor- bid degeneration as tubercle itself, there were fractions omitted, of carbon 53 parts, of hydrogen 7, and of nitrogen 17. The earthy salts do not amount to more than some 2 or 3 or 4 per cent, except in those cases in which there has been partial and successive tubercular deposition and absorption, the inorganic portion however, remaining behind. This process may go on till the greater portion of the tuberculous mass shall be nearly or wholly composed of earthy matter, assuming then the designation of cretaceous tubercle. Else in all tubercle, recent tubercle in particular, carbon very especially predominates. Tubercle is never developed, never deposited, except when the system in' general, tlie blood in particular, becomes tuber- culous. But the blood never becomes tuberculous, except through a vice or defect in the process of respiration in consequence of which the vital fluid becomes unable to throw off its carbonaceous and other impurities, whereupon in virtue of a law of morbid action more fully developed in my treatise on the Nature, Treatment, and Prevention of Pulmonary Consump- tion, this dead tubercle-matter is forthwith deposited in the tissues of man and brute, and very notably in the lungs and liver, in virtue we may presume of their leading function as carbon excretories from the blood. From ample experience, in short the most varied and multi- plied observation, we find that consumption is the result of the continued respiration of a foul, unrenewed atmosphere. Where human beings, or the inferior animals then, are pent up in narrow spaces and debarred day and night from pure unfouled air, tubercle deposits, after no very lengthened period, prove the in- variable result. If the atmosphere be sweet and unadulterated, at once by day and by night, there will be no tubercle, in short