The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin, and of their treatment by water and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin, and of their treatment by water and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    vary with the amount and character of the first-formed irritation, with the predisposition of the part secondarily affected, and with the general temperament of the individual. Thus, in the case of chronic stomach irritation extending to the head, the phase of mischief in this last will depend upon the long or short standing of the stomach disease ; upon its exasperation by food or physic ; upon the predisposition caused or avoided by the patient's toil or ease of brain and mind ; and upon the fact of his having a largely developed brain or otherwise. These various phases produce and represent respectively simple fulness of the head, impatience and irritability of temper, hypochondriasis, insanity, apoplectic con- gestion, paralytic congestion (I shall speak of the difference be- tween these two states afterwards), annihilation of the mind in drivelling imbecility ; so that a simple fit of acute indigestion in the stomach may, by improper management, grow into a chronic dyspepsia, and terminate in idiocy ; and this is an almost every- day fact F I repeat, then, that the most extensive changes in organs may be brought about without the intervention of animal sensation or pain; and this because the ganglionic nerves, which alone pre- side over the offices of the blood-vessels, are concerned in, and are capable of themselves of effecting those changes. The most serious ulceration of the stomach and bowels—nay, cancerous ulceration of that organ—may go on without the smallest amount of animal pain ; but far more fortunate are they in whom such pain is excited at a very early stage of mischief, for they are thereby warned from indulgence in its causes, and cautioned to remedy it; whilst, in the other case, the very core of life may be unsound, the vitals undermined and beyond remedy, before the opportunity of applying any is given. How often have I seen medical men pronounce positively the absence of all in- flammation of the digestive organs, because pressure on them ivith the hand elicited no pain ! and this at the very time when apoplectic fulness of the head from extension of chronic irritation of stomach kept the patient tottering on the brink of the grave, yet was speedily relieved by hot fomentations oyer the stomach, and spare diet. The fact is, that the nerves of organic life neither are obedient to the will, nor capable of sensation in the ordinary acceptation of that term. On the other hand, they urge and modify both the will and the sensation of our animal nerves—that is, of our brain,