Influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; being a treatise on the principal diseases incidental to Europeans in the East and West Indies, Mediterranean, and coast of Africa / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Influence of tropical climates on European constitutions ; being a treatise on the principal diseases incidental to Europeans in the East and West Indies, Mediterranean, and coast of Africa / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    limited faculties are scarcely capable of embracing in thought, much less of describing in the fetters of language. Taking tacts, however, and personal observation for land- marks, I shall pursue the investigation, as nearly as possible, in the order of nature and of events. There exists between different, and often distant parts of the body, a certain connexion or relation, w hich, in medical language, is called consent of parts:—that is, when one is affected by particular impressions, the other sympathises, as it were, and takes on a kind of analogous action. This sympathy, or consent of parts, has «ev6k been satis- factorily accounted for, by the ablest of our physiologists, nor—(mirabile dictu!) by the most ingenious of our theorists. As all, however, are agreed in respect to the fac't, we must allow the cause to remain locked up in the bosom of Nature for the present.* Of these sympathies, none is more universally remarked, or familiarly known, than that which subsists between the external surface of the body, and the internal surface of the alimentary canal. This, indeed, seems less incomprehensible than many others, since the latter appears to be a continua- tion of the former, with the exception of the cuticle. In the first section, 1 gave an instance of the skin sympathising with the stomach, where the cold drink was applied to the latter organ. Had the water been applied to the external surface of the body, on the other hand, the stomach would have sympathised, and the thirst been assuaged. The loss of tone, then, in the extreme vessels of the sur- face, it* consequence of excessive, or long continued perspi- ration i*^ on this principle, necessarily accompanied, or soon succeeded by a consentaneous1 lass of tone in the stomach, and fully accounts for that anorexia, or diminution of appetite, which we seldom fail to experience on entering the tropics, or, indeed,, during hot weather in England, Now this, al- though but a link in the chain of effects, seems to me a most wise precaution of nature, to lower and adapt the irritable, plethoric European constitution, to a burning climate, by guarding very effectually against the dangerous consequences of repletion. This view of the subject will set in a clear * I do not see Unit Dr. Piirk's laboured discussion on this subject, in the. journal <>f Science, litisbrolijrht tisii whii nearer lire knn«I edgeoi\mu pa i het i r 'action. There is no other rational niorleof uecountiiiR lor tin; phenomenon. ih:i!i through ihe inedjum of the brain, ihe Sii^soriuni l oiumunr;, to.which all im- rtretstoils are rransriiifietl, arid wYierice all Nervoiis Influence proceed.-. I have explained myself more fully on this subject in the See lion on the Nervous System, in my treadle on disorders of the Liver and Internal Organs.