Practical observations on the venereal disease, and on the use of mercury / By Abraham Colles.

  • Colles, Abraham, 1773-1843.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on the venereal disease, and on the use of mercury / By Abraham Colles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    éase,” is now of little moment. But does it not appear strange, that subsequent writers have not made some effort to supply these defi- ciencies? Every person, even of those superficially acquainted with the medical literature of this disease, who has perused the brief history and the clear classification of its symptoms which this distinguished surgeon has given, must have observed with Satisfaction the great improvements which have been effected there- by in its pathology and treatment ; and it was reasonable to expect that a sense of those benefits would have impelled some later writer to investigate with zeal the most minute particulars in the progress ofits symptoms. No doubt, the opportunities for prosecuting these enquiries must have been but rare, as a little reflection will show ; for, after the first series of secondary symptoms have appeared, it must be extremely difficult to trace the further steps of the disease, because every practitioner is so impressed with the sense of duty to do all in his power for the relief of his patient, that he cannot, consistently with that feeling, withhold such medicine, or refrain from such means as may be best adapted to the case: hence the further course of the present, as well as of any future symptoms, must be more or less altered from that which they would have pursued, if totally uninterfered with. Another obstacle which, till within these few years, obstructed all attempts to trace the natural progress of the venereal disease, was the uniform employment of mercury in every form and symptom of syphilis. If that medicine had been administered in such a manner as to have had merely that effect upon the symptoms which it had in Mr. Hunter’s experiments, namely, removing one set of symptoms without curing the disease, and allowing the next series to appear in their natural time and order, we could then with ease aud certainty trace the progress of the disease through all its stages; but this is by no means the case, for we find in the majority of instances, where secondary symptoms have occutred after the use of mercury, that this medicine has been administered very freely, and that, therefore, theit occurrence is not to be attributed to the too sparing use of mereury; on the contrary, in the majority of patients who have been thus unsuccessfully treated, mercury has been carelessly or injudiciously employed, and has been pushed so far as to injure the general health materially, while at the same time it has so changed the local symptoms that we cannot, without great difficulty, recognise their true pathognomonic characters ; for example, a venereal ulcer in the throat will no longer present the true specific appearance, if the patient has been overdosed with mercury, but will rather exhibit the features of a scrofulous ulcer- ation, and will ultimately heal with that silvery cicatrix which is the natural termination of scrofulous ulceration in the throat ; here, then, the treatment has caused such a change in the local character that we have been unable to recognise its true syphilitic nature. Another very important change which is sometimes effected in this disease by this injudicious or overpowering use of mercury, is that the order of succession of the symptoms is completely altered ; 62*