Blood poisons / by Alfred Schofield.

  • Schofield, A. T. (Alfred Taylor), 1846-1929.
Date:
[1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Blood poisons / by Alfred Schofield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    time. Owing to the beautiful principle of compensation in nature, this accident, which would at once otherwise lead to fatal results, is met in this very way. The heart does get both larger and stronger, and a person with heart-disease of this nature may thus live on to his full term ; but he will never be perfectly strong. It is therefore a dread disease, because it is a disease of youth, and as a rule the results are life-long. Besides its effects on the heart, it of course attacks the limbs ; differing from gout, however, in showing a pre¬ ference for the larger joints of the body, such as the knee. As in gout, there is intense pain, and general fever occurs all over the body, with profuse sweats, by which it is believed that nature is endeavouring to get rid of the poison through the skin. Every joint of the body may in turn be attacked by rheumatism, for here again it differs from gout, in moving from one part to another, instead of keeping generally to the one spot. The older a person is when he has the first attack of rheumatism, the less danger is there of heart disease. One bad feature of rheumatic fever is that it tends to return again and again, and each time weakens the person more and more. So far we have only spoken of one sort of rheumatism —rheumatic fever, but there are many other sorts scarcely less formidable. Bheumatic Gout, &c. There is rheumatic gout, which, instead of attacking a joint and leaving it at the close just as it was before, deforms it more or less, producing curious thickenings of the finger joints and elsewhere, and in the end making the joint quite stiff, and creaking like a new boot. Then again there is simple chronic rheumatism, constant weary pain in some joint or joints, or in the