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.

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    patient should be wrapped in woollen blankets to promote perspiration. In addition to this, strict diet must be adhered to and the patient must be confined to his own room during the treatment. This method has long been considered the mildest of all modes of medicinal treatment, inasmuch as these remedies do not injuriously affect the body in any way, and the slighter manifestations of syphilis sometimes quickly disappear under the use of them. No one now con- tends that these decoctions have any specific action, but it cannot be denied that an increase of metabolism, and thereby a disappearance of slight lesions, may be induced by restricted diet and increased diaphoresis and diuresis. The same effect may be seen if typhoid fever, pneumonia, and other diseases accompanied by high fever and profuse perspiration attack a syphilitic patient. Bearing in mind, however, that syphilis is caused by a microbe which may remain in the body, not for a few days or weeks, but for years, we are driven to conclude that such a method, although by checking the growth of the microbes it may for the moment be followed by improvement, can never, or only by accident, destroy the microbes. This is con- firmed by daily experience. Relapses are the rule, and the few cases in which it is claimed that a radical cure has been effected are open to grave doubt as to whether the disease was really constitutional. Often the method causes only loss of time and loss of strength to the patient. I fully agree with Michaelis in calling such patients, weakened bv decoctions of herbs and semi-starvation, unfortunates exposed, as