The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers.

  • Chambers, Thomas King, 1818-1889.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The renewal of life : clinical lectures illustrative of a restorative system of medicine, given at St. Mary's Hospital / by Thomas K. Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    59/436 (page 47)
    remedy, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that its benefit is purely mechanical, and that it acts by removing from the mucous membrane of the stomach a poison only partially absqrbed and still adherent to it. Another reason for suspecting that the gastric mucous membrane is an early if not a primary recipient of the poison, is that it early exhibits such special phenomena as usually accompany the ingestion of an unwholesome material. Spontaneous vomiting is very generally found in the first stage of Fever (as you have observed in the patient under consideration), and seems to offer a presumption that the part which is then most feeling the effects of the poison is that organ which most resents it—the gastric mucous membrane. Such is the evidence by which I have been led to believe that the exciting cause of Continued Fever enters usually by the digestive canal—valeat quantum. When the poison has once gained admission and is diffused by means of the circulation through the system, its effect is to destroy the vitality of a con- siderable amount of the organic living matter with which it comes in contact. The destruction is inter- stitial, not local—I mean, it does not kill absolutely a certain spot which it touches, like sulphuric acid, but it kills only certain constituents of the tissues. The destruction is partial, not entire—the organic matter is not utterly disoi’ganized, but only reduced to a less vital, less organic condition. It may be traced easiest in the alterations found in the medium by which it is diffused. The blood, the common thoroughfare for distribution of good and evil to the tissues, exhibits a serious change. If you examine it under the microscope you will find that the normally-shaped red dies are diminished in numbers as compared with what pathologists call