On diseases which affect corresponding parts of the body in a symmetrical manner / by William Budd.

  • Budd, William, 1811-1880.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diseases which affect corresponding parts of the body in a symmetrical manner / by William Budd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    expected, whether we regard the great variety of tissues on which most of these poisons exert their action, giving evidence of less determinate affinity, or the'remarkable peculiarities of their nature,—so unlike, in essential properties, to common chemical agents, and therefore less likely to be influenced by those agencies which regulate the actions of the latter. Nevertheless, in syphilitic diseases of the bones, and in gonorrheal rheumatism, a very remarkable degree of symmetry is often observed, and the same is true of syphilitic diseases of the eyes. Apart from all these, and still more remote in nature from common chemical agents, is the morbid element of cancer. This element is, in fact, not a mere chemical agent, but an organized form, pos- sessed of vital endowments. And from the almost perfect agreement between the cancer element and globules of pus and mercury, in the manner of their dissemination, after they have found their way into the blood, it may be clearly shown, that the distribution of disseminated cancer is, in great part, determined by mechanical conditions.* And although this leads to a certain kind of symmetry in arrangement, since these conditions must be alike in double organs, it is sufficiently obvious, that the fact is different in its nature, and in that of the agencies by which it is * See a paper by the Author, On the Pathology and Causes of Cancer, in the Lancet, for May the 21st and 28th, 1842.