Observations on the use and abuse of mercurial medicines in various diseases / by James Hamilton ; with notes and an appendix by Ansel W. Ives.

  • Hamilton, James, 1767-1839.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the use and abuse of mercurial medicines in various diseases / by James Hamilton ; with notes and an appendix by Ansel W. Ives. 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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    j4 lants, cannot possibly be conquered by the natu- ral powers of the constitution. To appreciate the full value of this fact, it is necessary to recall to the recollection of the pro- fessional reader, that other animal poisons besides that of Syphilis, and also the tendency to various diseases, are communicated to the infant in utero, and that such poisons and diseases do not so reg- ularly prove fatal. The infection of smallpox, for example, has been transmitted from the female parent in many cases, and the infant has been found to have had the disease in a mild degree. Measles and scarlatina, it is more than probable, have been also communicated with impunity to the infant in the womb. If it be urged, that when women in the early months of pregnancy are af- fected with measles, or smallpox, or scailatina, in a violent degree, they commonly miscarry, af- fording presumption that the infant had been de- stroyed by the disease of the parent, the objec- tion may with great confidence be repelled, for the abortion commonly happens at a period an- tecedent to that at which the infection could take place,—and besides, the phenomena unequivocal- ly denote, that the miscarriage arises from an in-