Syphilis and the nervous system : being a revised reprint of the Lettsomian lectures for 1890 delivered before the Medical Society of London / by W.R. Gowers.

  • Gowers, W. R. (William Richard), 1845-1915.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Syphilis and the nervous system : being a revised reprint of the Lettsomian lectures for 1890 delivered before the Medical Society of London / by W.R. Gowers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    127/140
    erations, as we have seen, are not checked by specific treatment, and there is some reason to think that they are not rarely accelerated by such treatment, especially when it exerts a depressing influence on the general health. I have seen many instances of this, especially from energetic mercurial treatment. In most cases of the kind, the evil has been done by the repetition of mercurial treatment, in the hope of removing symp- toms which were not, and could not be, removed by such treatment. There is one other important element in the treatment of luetic lesions in the nervous system that is often for- gotten. We have to do with a syphilitic process, and with the damage to the nerve tissues which the process causes. Thus there are three elements in the afl'ection —the specific process, the damage to the nerve tissues caused by that process, and the symptoms that are due to this. It is important to recognize each of these elements, and to consider, in arranging our treatment, how far the two pathological elements need special measures. In arranging the treatment of syphi- litic lesions we must never forget, any more than in diagnosis and prognosis, the simple changes in the nerve tissues on which alone the symptoms depend. To confine our attention to the syphilitic element in treat- ment is to neglect measures that may make an appre- ciable difference in the ultimate result. The cases are, it is true, rare in which we are able to appreciate the effect of neglect on the one hand, or of recognition on the other. In the improvement that follows the re- moval of the syphilitic process, we are commonly unable