Contributions to pathology and the practice of medicine / by John Richard Wardell.
- Wardell, John Richard, 1819-1885.
- Date:
- 1885
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Contributions to pathology and the practice of medicine / by John Richard Wardell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
807/840 page 793
![respiratory process and evolve animal heat. This glycogenic function is a physiological fact of much significance in a practical point of view. In acute or yellow atrophy, it has been discovered that the urine exhibits remarkable changes, as there may be the total dis- appearance of urea, uric acid, the chlorides, sulphates, and phosphates ; and these are replaced by the fibro-albuminous products named leucine and tyrosin. The waxy or amyloid deposit recognised in this organ is considered to be consequent on ulceration of the osseous tissue and long-standing syphilis. Palpation, percussion, and feeling the notches in the free edge, tell us much of splenic enlargement. The latest additions to our information relative to the spleen are chiefly physiological. In the intertrabecular spaces are doubtless first formed the molecules which become developed into blood-corpuscles; and it is believed that in the pulp they also become disintegrated. Such vital processes being there elaborated, it can thus be understood how anaemia and disease of the spleen stand in intimate correlation. In leucocythsemia, that affection which is characterised by excess of colourless corpuscles and diminution of blood-corpuscles, great light has been thrown upon the splenic lesion by which it is accompanied. Excess of fibrine and decrease of coloured corpuscles are the two primary cardinal changes in leucocythajmia. Such are some of the new facts respecting diseases within the abdomen. In glancing at the nervous system, much in recent years has lieen done ; still, it is undeniable that a great deal of ambiguity remains in diagnosticating cerebral affections, because the degree of objective symptoms is frequently by no means the exponent of the degree of morbid action. We are often and correctly guided by physiological phenomena. I recollect a man who had a small osseous formation at the base not larger than a pea, which had produced terrible epileptiform attacks. The philosophic and physiological experiments of Ferrier have conferred much more certitude in the diagnosis of cerebral maladies than was previously known, illustrative of which Dr. Hughes Bonnet's case at the Westminster Hospital is a good example. And it is now evident that diseases of the brain will be known witli far more exactitude and precision. Schiff has shown that augmented heat produced by activity of the nerve-centres is primarily due to the vaso-motor nerves; and the experiments of Heidenhain, Riegel, and Fick, have solved some interesting problems relative to the extrication of animal heat. In blood-poisoning, we are more im- ])ressed with the peripheral irritation which produces phenomena in tlie great nervous centres. The vaso-motor function renders expli- cable much which before was ill understood; epilepsy in age we now refer to retrograde metamorphosis of the tissues; and it is generally accepted that this disease, epilepsy, which has an etiology so multi- form, is always primarily caused by anaemia; and when there is muscular atrophy in the young, we refer the wasting to a foregoing brain-change. Again, softening of the cord, we now know, always means more or less of anaesthesia as the accompaniment; and it has](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20393325_0807.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
