A treatise on hydrencephalus, or dropsy of the brain / by James Carmichael-Smyth.

  • Smyth, James Carmichael, 1741-1821.
Date:
1814
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on hydrencephalus, or dropsy of the brain / by James Carmichael-Smyth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    and, if it causes no symptoms, there can be no means of distinguishing it: well might Physic be called a conjectural art^ were such doctrines generally established. The numerous and contradictory opinions en- tertained by medical writers and medical profes- sors, of the nature of Hydrocephalus, must sur- prise the reader, as I own they surprised me, now a physician of nearly half a century's stand- ing. By one it is considered as an apoplexy; by an- other an inflammation of the brain or phrenitis; by a third, as a slighter inflammation, to which he gives the diminutive epithet of phrenicula; a fourth looks upon it as a nervous fever; and a fifth, as a slight species of typhus, or contagious one. Whilst Dr. Cheyne, to whom I am indebted for most of the above information, supposes the disease to consist in a morbid action, of which no explanation can be given. What triumph does such discordant opinions afford the empy- rical piiysicians ? What force does it give to