Experimental researches on the causes and nature of catarrhus aestivus (hay-fever or hay-asthma) / by Charles H. Blackley.

  • Blackley Charles H. (Charles Harrison)
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experimental researches on the causes and nature of catarrhus aestivus (hay-fever or hay-asthma) / by Charles H. Blackley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    some of the brightest laurels which can be won by the scientific discoverer. § 2. Whether we accept the germ theory of disease, and regard these germs as portions of organic matter, which have a separate and independent existence and as capable of growth and multiplication, within the organism, to an extent at present undetermined, or accept what has lately been desig- nated the “ physical theory,” and maintain that the causes of communicable diseases do not possess any of the charac- teristics of germs, we shall still have to admit that disease is, in a large number of instances, the result of the opera- tion of two principal factors :—The one being a condition of the animal body which permits the development of disease in that organism—the other that of some agent external to the body, which becomes operative whenever there is present the condition above named, or whenever this external agent is in sufficient quantity to overcome the resistance which every organ is, in a state of health, able to offer to that which is inimical to the due performance of its functions. § 3. The first condition named, though often varying, is probably always present, in a greater or lesser degree, even in the most healthy subject. The second, in like manner, is probably as variable as the first, and, though possibly always present in the larger centres of modern civilisation, is ever changing in its quantity or its power. § 4. The essential nature of that state of the organism which gives a proclivity to disease, and permits external agents to act upon the animal body, so as to produce morbid conditions, may never be fully known to us; and it may be that, with our present means of research, the active causes of many of our most formidable maladies will elude our grasp for long years to come. There are, however, some of the more simple and less fatal diseases in which, by an improved method of study, we may hope to obtain a better knowledge than we now possess of the nature and modus operandi of those external agents which act as exciting causes ; and it is, perhaps, in searching for such that we shall most easily learn very important lessons in studying the etiology of disease.