The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner.

  • Dickson, Samuel, 1802-1869.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of the chrono-thermal system of medicine : with the fallacies of the faculty, in a series of lectures / by Samuel Dickson ; containing also an introduction and notes by William Turner. 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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    simplicity. What is the meaning of the term Spasm ? It means an irre- gular or unnatural contraction of some muscle of the body ; and in the case of the voluntary muscles, you cannot by any effort of the will control or counteract it. By rubbing and warming the part, you may sometimes suc- ceed, and there are a great many medicines by which, when taken internally, the same effect may be produced ; but what will answer in one case may not answer in another. The disease is sometimes termed Convulsion, and Cramp also; more especially if the spasms be painful. The difference of locality in which spasms take place in different persons has afforded professors an excellent opportunity of mystifying the whole subject. When it happens in the membraneous lining of the lachrymal duct, the tears accumulate at the inner angle of the eye, from the passage to the nose being closed up by the contracting spasm. This disease is called Epiphora, and sometimes, though not quite correctly, Fistula Lachrymalis. Sneeze, Hiccough, and Yawn, are also effects of spasmodic action. Occurring in the muscular appa- ratus of the windpipe, or its divisions, spasm is familiar to you all in the word Asthma ; and it is also termed Dyspnaa, from the difficult breathing which it certainly occasions. When this spasmodic action affects the muscles about the jaws and throat, and the patient at the same time has convul- sions of the face and limbs, there is usually loss of consciousness, with a sud- den loss of power in all his members, which causes him to fall. This is the Epilepsy, or falling sickness. The subject of the disease termed Jaun- dice, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, owes the yellow colour of his skin to spasm—spasm of the gall-ducts—though any other obstruction of these passages—a gall-stone for example, may give rise to the same effect. Taking place in the ilium or small intestines, spasm is termed the Iliac Pas- sion ; in the colon or great intestine, Colic ; in the urethra, Spasmodic Stric- ture. The Lockjaw affords yet another example of spasm. That all these various diseases are merely effects of the same action in different parts, is proved by each and all of them having been known to assume the most per- fectly periodic type in individual cases, and by all being more or less ame- nable to the same class of remedies most generally influential in keeping off the ague-fit. Like every other Force in nature, our remedial powers all act by causing Attraction or Repulsion; and for a reason to be afterwards given, every remedy can act both ways in different individuals. All medicinal agencies have the power of producing inverse motion; and, in this way, they cure or alleviate in one case, while in another they cause or aggravate disease. Opium, for example, will set one man to sleep, and keep another wakeful. Arsenic has cured the tremor, chill, and heat of ague, and produced them in a previ- ously healthy person. The same results have followed the exhibition of opium, bark, and copper. Moreover, to all four have I traced diseases with fits and remissions. A girl took a large dose of arsenic (sixty-four grains) for the purpose of suicide ; her design was discovered in sufficient time to prevent her death; but a periodic epilepsy ushered in by chills and heats was the result. A man of the 30th Foot, after a course of hard drinking, became epileptic: his disease came on every second day at the same hour. Quinine, silver, and calomel, were tried without success. I then gave him arsenic, after which he never had another fit. $n these two cases, then, arsenic produced inverse motions, causing epilepsy in the first, and curing it in the second. When I come to treat particularly of the pas- sions, I shall show you that the same passion which has caused an ague or an epilepsy, may cure either. In truth, I scarcely know a disease which the passions, Rage and Fear, have not cured and caused, according to their at- tractive or repulsive mode of action in particular cases. I have said that Asthma is an intermittent disease. The fits of convul- sive asthma, according to Darwin, return at periods, and so far resemble the excess of an intermittent fever:' Had this physician's knowledge of the nature of asthma been sufficiently complete, he would have told us that be-