On brain and nerve exhaustion (neurasthenia) and on the exhaustions of influenza / by Thomas Stretch Dowse.

  • Dowse, Thomas Stretch.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On brain and nerve exhaustion (neurasthenia) and on the exhaustions of influenza / by Thomas Stretch Dowse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dififering from gout and tubercle, we are right in affirming that it does not as a rule remain latent in the constitution through a generation, but rather develops itself in a most cd m3.nnGr in succeeding offspring. We quote again from Sir James Paget : 'A lady died with cancer of the stomach; one of her daughters died with cancer of the stomach; another died with cancer of the breast; and, of her grandchildren, two died with cancer of the breast, two of cancer of the uterus, one of cancer of the bladder, one of cancer of the axillary- glands, one of cancer of the stomach, and one of cancer of the rectus.'* We thus feel, that our knowledge of the nature and pro- pagation of these morbid products is, to say the least of it, attended with some amount of obscurity; and more than this, the manner of their transmission and seat of location, is at the same time to a certain degree matter for con- jecture. For a definite morbid material to be constitutional, it must exist not only in the blood, but in the tissues and the fluids throughout the body; and although, as before stated, gout, cancer, and scrofula are blood diseases, it would be wrong to'conclude from this, that the materies morbi existed in the blood, and in it alone. If we did so, we should be less likely to account for 'hereditary transmission, because both the spermatic fluid and ovum must be said to be free from blood ; still, in the primordial germ, it must be allowed, does exist that inconceivable something, which grows as tissue grows, and pervades all. Apart from any absolutely recognized dyscrasy, there is yet another constitutional condition, in which appear to be signally manifest those properties or qualities, which go to make up by hereditary descent the nervous temperament, and in which we, in the majority of instances, find that, which is commonly called