An inquiry into the sources and mode of action of the poison of fever / by Alfred Hudson.

  • Hudson, Alfred, 1808-1880.
Date:
[1841]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the sources and mode of action of the poison of fever / by Alfred Hudson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE SOURCES AND MODE OF ACTION OF THE POISON OF FEVER. By ALFRED HUDSON, M.B. T.C.D. PHYSICIAN TO THE Much as has been written upon the history of fever, it cannot by any means be considered as an exhausted subject. If indeed we were to test our knowledge of its sources by the universality of their admission, and consider the general agreement of all observers as to their laws as the true proof of these being fully ascertained—a criterion which is applicable to medicine as to the other sciences of observation—we should see reason to conclude that in reality our know- ledge of the causes of fever and their modes of action upon the living body is of very small account, and by no means of the most accurate description ; for though, in this country at least, the doctrines of localization of fever are not advocated, nor fever considered the effect of inflammation of any particular organ or organs, we find in the most recent writers, equally as in the ancient, the widest differences of opinion as to the phenomena which constitute the origin or nature of this essential disease. An analysis of the mass of conflicting statements upon this subject may per- haps be useful, if only as a preliminary step to other inquiries, by shewing how much of what has been put forward as evidence is really founded on observation, and how much is on the contrary mere matter of opinion and not of fact. Such an examination of what has been advanced upon the disputed question, it is proposed to attempt in the following enquiry. We regard the essential disease termed fever as the effect of the action on the living body of a morbid poison—in other words of— “ One of that peculiar class of substances which are generated during certain processes of decomposition, and which act upon the animal economy as deadlv poisons ; not on account of their power of entering into combination with it, or by reason of their containing a poisonous material, but solely by virtue of their particular condition.”* The mode of operation of this poison upon the body is a fertile theme for disputation between the humoralists and solidists of this as of preceding ages, and whence it is derived and where generated—whether in the body or out of the body—the contagionists and non-contagionists are as much disagreed about as ever. The humoralist holds that the very definition of a morbid poison, if correctly given by the distinguished author from wrhom we have adopted it, would point to the blood as the subject of its operations. Since, assuming that the essence of such poison is that its elements are in a state of decomposition or transposition —and its action to communicate that peculiar transposition to the constituents of the body with which it may be brought into contact. He finds in the blood a substance the most susceptible of any part of the organism of the action of exterior influences, and whose constituents are the most prone of any to form new combinations. The humoralist also points to the analogy of other morbid * Liebig’s Organic Chemistry. A