A practical compendium of the diseases of the skin, including a particular consideration of the more frequent and intractable forms of these affections; with cases / By Jonathan Green.

  • Green, Jonathan, 1788?-1864.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical compendium of the diseases of the skin, including a particular consideration of the more frequent and intractable forms of these affections; with cases / By Jonathan Green. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have increased redness, uneasy sense of heat, some modification of pain, variously characterised as itching, smarting, tingling, &c., and a certain degree of swelling, conjointly or separately, in every one of them. The immediate dependence of these diseases on an inflammatory condition of the portion of skin immediately affected, at least, is a circumstance of the highest importance to be borne in mind, inasmuch as it gives the clue to the whole plan of treatment that can be rationally pursued in regard to them. In their acute stages and accidental paroxysms, they are to be attacked by general antiphlogistic means, blood-letting, purging, low diet, rest, &c., and external remedies of the most soothing description— tepid baths, emollient fomentations, &c. In their chronic stages, again, general measures are commonly much less necessary and of much less avail; the diseases then require to be assailed in their immediate seats, by stimulating applications of different kinds, to induce new actions—by the warm and sulphureous, the alkaline and acid, water bath, the hot air, vapour, and fumigating bath. Irritating washes and unguents, also, of different kinds, then come into play; and lastly, such medicines as powerfully modify the constitution, sulphur, mercury, arsenic, (fee., and which seem occa¬ sionally to prove beneficial on the principle so much insisted on by the greatest of all modern medical philosophers, John Hunter, the inability of the constitution or its parts to support two orders or kinds of action at the same time ; these powerful medicines do, in fact, occasion new diseases, during the continuance of which the old ones have time to get well. So much for the essential nature or proximate cause of cutaneous affections, and for the leading idea that ought to guide us in our treatment of them generally. This class of diseases, however, occurs with such variety of forms, shows such dissimilar ten¬ dencies, and entails such different consequences, and therefore requires modifications of treatment so various, that attempts were, at a very early period, made to assist the mind in their discrimina¬ tion, by the adoption of some system of arrangement or classifica¬ tion. I pass over those, in general extremely objectionable in their principles, and even more useless in their practical applications, that were imagined previously to the time of Wiliam who, pos¬ sessed of a naturally acute mind, and deeply imbued with the learning both of ancient and modern times, arranged the diseases of the skin according to their primary external characters, under eight orders :—1st, Papulae ; 2d, Squamae ; 3d, Exanthemata; 4th, Bullae; 5th, Yesiculse; 6th, Pustulae; 7th, Tubercula; 8th. Maculae. This arrangement, with the modifications which time and better information, mainly obtained through its means, have introduced, is that now adopted in almost all the medical schools of Europe; and being based on the elements of the diseases them¬ selves, not on the ever varying products of their presence, or the presumed and often imaginary remote causes of their origin, it is found applicable in every stage of their existence.