First lines of the practice of physic / [William Cullen].

  • Cullen, William, 1710-1790
Date:
1829
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First lines of the practice of physic / [William Cullen]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    216/454 (page 202)
    from the quality of the fluid evacuated, or from the singu- larly enervating pleasure attending the evacuation, or from the evacuation’s taking off the tension of parts, the tension of which has a singular power in supporting the tension and vigour of the whole body, I cannot positively determine ; but I apprehend that upon one or other of these supposi- tions the emaciation attending the tabes dorsalis must be accounted for; and therefore that it is to be considered as an instance of the Atrophia debilium, rather than of the Atro- phia inanitorum. 1611. A fifth cause of a deficiency of fluids and of ema- ciations in the whole or in a particular part of the body, may be the concretion of the small vessels, either not ad- mitting of fluids, or of the same proportion as before; and this seems to me to be the case in the Atrophia senilis, Sauv. sp. 2. Or it may be a palsy of the larger trunks of the arte- ries rendering them unfit to propel the blood into the smaller vessels; as is frequently the case of paralytic limbs, in which the arteries are affected as well as the muscles. ‘The Atro- phia lateralis, Sauv. sp. 15, seems to be of this nature. 1612. A second general head of the causes of emaciation I have mentioned in 1602. to be a deficiency of oil. ‘The extent and quantity of the cellular texture in every part of the body, and therefore how considerable a part it makes in the bulk of the whole, is now well known. But this sub- stance, in different circumstances, is more or less filled with an oily matter; and therefore the bulk of it, and in a great measure that of the whole body, must be greater or less ac- cording as this substance is more or less filled in that man- ner. The deficiency of fluids, for a reason to be immedi- ately explained, is generally accompanied with a deficiency of oil: but physicians have commonly attended more to the latter cause of emaciation than to the other, that being usually the most evident; and I shall now endeavour to as~