Boyleston prize dissertations for the years 1838 and 1839 : on scrofula, rheumatism, and erysipelatous inflammation / by Edward Warren.

  • Warren, Edward.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Boyleston prize dissertations for the years 1838 and 1839 : on scrofula, rheumatism, and erysipelatous inflammation / by Edward Warren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    healthy parents, the vigorous performance of the digestive functions will go on for a considerable time, especially if it enjoy pure air, light and moderate exercise ; but eventually, it will lose flesh, and become pale, emaciated and unhealthy. In the case of infants where the mother has no milk or not sufficient for its nourishment, the child more frequently suffers from being injudiciously fed than from want of food. When it suffers from insufficient nourishment, it is most commonly in the case where the mother has sufficient milk, but of poor quality. The effect of the deficiency when this cause occurs, is obvious. The stomach loses its tone, the chylo- poietic and the lymphatic vessels their vigour, the body is imperfectly nourished, and languor, emaciation, and debility of all the organs and tissues ensues. The effect of too much or too little food is very similar. The stomach and other organs concerned in the first acts of digestion, are deranged and weakened in either case, and do not supply the various parts of the body with nourishment. Hence occurs that state of debility, which is considered as the essence of scrofula: and hence also that want of richness of the blood which gives the preponderance of the white tissues over the rest. We have said that a want of nutritive matter in the milk is a cause of disease in the child ; too rich milk is equally so. In the child of healthy parents, which is exempt from other causes of scrofula, improper or insufficient food will be more likely to oc- casion other diseases than this ; but, in proportion as the health of the parents is bad, or the child feeble from birth, and to the degree in which this cause is combined with those hereafter to be mention- ed, will be the tendency to produce scrofula. Where there is a predisposition to this condition, a bad diet will readily develope it. Impure Air.—This is the next in importance to that which has just been considered. Dr. Alison attributes more importance to this, than to improper food. It is undoubtedly difficult to ascertain exactly how much each of these causes, and those afterwards to be mentioned, has to do with the production of the diathesis in question, for they seldom exist separately. In the poor Irish families who live among us, can any thing be worse than the diet of the children ? They seldom suffer from deficient food it is true, but it is of the most improper quality. As to their cleanliness, it is much the same with that of the swine, with whom they are sometimes reared; yet exercise in the open air they have abundantly, and indigestion is comparatively,rare. It is our impression that scrofula is rare among this class; diseases among children certainly are so. They make much fewer calls upon the attendance of a physician, even when that attendance is gratuitous, than parents in the higher and middle classes. In order that respiration may be properly performed, pure air is essential. Whatever interferes with respiration, prevents the for- mation of blood suited to the purposes of nourishment. Perhaps there is another way in which an unhealthy or impure air acts upon X3—d bd 2