Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet.

  • Bennet, James Henry, 1816-1891.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nutrition in health and disease : a contribution to hygiene and to clinical medicine / James Henry Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    the carbonaceous element of imperfectly-elaborated chyle, and not from idiopathic disease. When such is the case, mercurials and purgatives only temporarily relieve the congested and irritable state of the organ, which soon returns under the influence of a continuance of the nutritive derange- ment. By removing the latter, by restoring the digestive and nutritive functions to a healthy state, the incubus of emunctory duties is taken off the liver, and in our climate it often returns to a normal healthy state without any special treatment being directed to it. Moreover, when the subsi- dence of biliary derangement takes place in such cases, that is from the removal of its cause, the improvement is often permanent. The liver, ceasing to be called upon to perform emunctory duties, which irritate and disorder it, returns to its normal state, and quietly carries on its customary physiological functions. The medicinal treatment of defective digestion and nutrition in confirmed dyspepsia is, of course, subordinate to the pathological conditions co-exist- ing, which it is foreign to my purpose even to enumerate. Suffice it to say, that when defective nutrition is merely the result of the sympathetic reaction on the digestive system of disease existing in regions and organs other than the digestive, the principal medicinal treatment to be pursued is that of the concomitant malady. When that is removed, the digestive and nutritive power generally rallies p