Differential diagnosis and treatment of disease : a text-book for practitioners and advanced students / by Augustus Caillé.

  • Caillé, Augustus, 1854-1935.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Differential diagnosis and treatment of disease : a text-book for practitioners and advanced students / by Augustus Caillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/910 (page 16)
    ACUTE AND CHRONIC INFECTIONS AND THEIR SEQUELAE, PARASITIC INVASION, AND AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF REFLEX NEUROSES AND INTOXICATIONS FROM WITHOUT OR FROM WITHIN (BY REASON OF FAULTY INTERNAL SECRETION). SPECIAL EXAMINATIONS Examinations with Rontgen Rays are an established feature in medicine and surgery. X ray pictures, like all shadowgraphs, are apt to be deceptive and misleading. Stereoscopic or double ray prints are apt to give a clearer insight into the actual relation of the parts than plain shadowgraphs. In making an x ray exposure, every precaution should be taken to avoid burns. In lengthy exposures the tube must be from ten to fourteen inches from the skin and the latter may be anointed with vaseline. Transillumination of organs and regions by means of condensed light occasionally gives definite results. The Tuberculin Test, which is of inestimable value in detecting bovine tuberculosis, may occasionally be employed; but in the present state of our knowledge the writer does not advocate its routine employment. See also article on Tuberculosis of Lungs. Exploratory Puncture and Incision are not performed often enough, and many a doubtful case could be readily cleared up by such a procedure under antiseptic precautions. Other Examinations, such as an examination of a patient in a comatose condition, are extremely unsatisfactory as a rule. One should be very guarded in expressing an opinion in such cases, and emergency treatment is indicated without an exact knowledge of the underlying condition. See Coma. Finally, cases will be met with in which the practitioner is compelled to anaesthetize the patient in order to clear up certain conditions. Hysterical contractures and stiff joints are thus detected, and a painful examination is made possible by the complete relaxation which anaesthesia affords. When ancesthesia is employed for diagnostic purposes, the patient has a right to expect that the evidence to be elicited shoidd be conclusive one way or the other. For laboratory findings, see following chapter. When a positive diagnosis has been made the line of treatment to be adopted is self-evident, and it should be carried out on the principle of a non nocere.” When the diagnosis is “in dubio,” the treatment is naturally symptomatic.