Volume 1

An essay on venereal diseases, and the uses and abuses of mercury in their treatment / [Richard Carmichael] ; illustrated by drawings of the different forms of venereal eruptions.

  • Carmichael, Richard, 1779-1849.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on venereal diseases, and the uses and abuses of mercury in their treatment / [Richard Carmichael] ; illustrated by drawings of the different forms of venereal eruptions. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    difference between them is in the slower progress of the yaws, which commonly continues for many months before it is exhausted. The ulcers of the throat which attend this disease, resemble those of syphilis so nearly, that, according to the same practitioner, it is impossible to distin- guish the one from the other; and this circum- stance, and the pustular eruption of the skin, which resembles that of small-pox, would lead us to class it as the connecting link between syphilis and small-pox, in the chain of contagious diseases. Dr. Bateman observes, in his Synopsis of Cu- taneous Diseases, ‘that the practitioners in the West Indies soon learned by experience, that active preparations retard the natural progress of the yaws, and that mercurials, although they sus- pended it, and cleared the skin of the eruption, : yet left-the patient still susceptible of, or rather, still impregnated with the virus; which speedily evinced its presence, by a re-appearance of the symptoms more severe and tedious than before. In truth, the disease, it would-seem, like the pustular and exanthematous fevers of our own climate, will only leave the constitution after it has completed the various stages of its course, and removed the susceptibility of the individual to future infection ; and no medicine, yet disco- vered, has had any influence in superseding this action, or in accelerating its progress. Unless, therefore, any urgent symptoms should require B 2