Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver.

  • Bouchard, Ch. (Charles), 1837-1915.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on auto-intoxication in disease, or, Self-poisoning of the individual / by Ch. Bouchard ; tr., with a preface and new chapters added, by Thomas Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    chronic diseases, and explain the appearance of many illnesses of an acute character. I had devoted to this study the first years of my profession, and I have returned to it when I have tried to determine the exact domain of diathesis and the proc- esses by which we can undertake the cure of diathetic diseases. -My constant effort has been, and my duty will, perhaps, be, to render to diatheses the part which is theirs by right in the prejudices of medicine. To do that, I have been obliged to disengage them from the mystic cloud which encircled them, and I have rendered them physiologically intelligible when I have said that diathesis is a permanent disturbance of nutrition, which prepares, provokes, and maintains different diseases, as seen in their location, their evolution, and pathological process. This was to restore to diathesis its traditional signification; it was to consider it anew as a morbid temperament. Infection is the last of the four pathogenic processes. We find, again, traces of this notion very far back in the past, but it has assumed form only within the last quarter of this [now passed] century. It is what we call, or it is what, now particu- larly, deserves to be called, conlagium vivum. The interpretation of infection has provoked the warmest discussions in our times. The brilliancy of certain recent dis- coveries has been to fascinate and to dazzle. It has caused, according to temperament, enthusiasm or sarcasm, infatuation or dread. Infatuation or dread,—these are two sentiments which science repudiates. She will continue, in spite of resist- ance, and in spite of the intemperate displays of an exaggerated enthusiasm, to march, serenely and unmoved, toward truth. At the present time the living nature of contagious material is beyond all question. Ever since man has known contagion he has been asking himself of what it might consist. Of all hypotheses, not one has been verified, until the day in which it has been demonstrated that in the body of an individual attacked by a contagious disease there exist the lower vegetable organ- isms, capable of implanting themselves and of multiplying in the tissues of a healthy man, and of determining in him a disease similar to the original. That is the final termination of all systems relative to contagion.