The treatment of constitutional syphilis / by Oswald Ziemssen.

  • Ziemssen, Oswald.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of constitutional syphilis / by Oswald Ziemssen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/96 (page 11)
    and must, therefore, die—that is the idea which has guided me in the endeavour which I have now pursued for several years to find a real, thorough, and radical cure for syphilis, which shall cleanse the whole body from the microbe as a surgeon makes a local sore aseptic. And as the surgeon knows by the occurrence of suppuration, by the onset of erysipelas, or by a rigor that a sore is still septic, and that the antiseptic employed has been too weak, so I look upon every relapse as a sign of inadequate disinfection, owing either to the use of inappropriate, that is, insufficiently disinfecting, remedies, or to too short a course of treatment, or to both these causes equally. To discover a method whereby adequate disinfection can be carried out, that is the problem to be solved. The treatment of constitutional syphilis has hitherto been symptomatic; we should now aim not merely at the removal of a particular symptom, but at the complete cure of the disease itself and the definitive removal of its cause. As it was most likely that some one of the various remedies and methods already known to be capable of removing particular symptoms would be capable of eradicating the disease itself if applied long enough or in sufficient strength, I have tried every one of them, with the view of determining what prospect it might offer of entirely destroying the microbe. Moreover, every method having its advantages and facilities, or its disadvantages and difficulties, in relation to the individual patient, the physician should choose that method which, while curing the disease, involves no unnecessary pain, disfiguring operations, etc., and is