Pyretic treatment of rheumatism and allied and disorders / by Percy Wilde.

  • Wilde, Percy (Percy Roberts), 1856 or 1857-1929.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pyretic treatment of rheumatism and allied and disorders / by Percy Wilde. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anything which stimulates them may set up that general or local reaction which we call rheu¬ matism. It may be the reaction from a chill or an infection, the effect of vigorous exercise or a local strain of affected tissues which sets up efforts at oxidation which, when they are im¬ perfect, may cause pain. There has always been a tendency to regard the immediate cause of the rheumatic symptoms as the cause of the disease, but none of these causes can explain the symptoms met with in daily practice or the clinical history of the disease. We naturally associate rheumatism with cold and damp, but rheumatism is very frequent also in tropical countries, and, curiously enough, is more prevalent in dry tropics than in those where there is excessive moisture. This paradox is easily explained by the fact that it is easy to contract a chill in either, but the dry heat of the tropics encourages the radiation of heat from the body and prevents the temperature rising, while the moist heat checks the radiation of heat and so causes the temperature of the body to rise, and by so doing releases the lactic acid from the tissues. When the rheumatic process has been allowed to continue for months or years without any attempt to relieve the primary cause, we have