Memoirs on diphtheria : from the writings of Bretonneau, Guersant, Trousseau, Bouchut, Empis and Daviot / selected and translated by Robert Hunter Semple ; with a bibliographical appendix, by John Chatto.

Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs on diphtheria : from the writings of Bretonneau, Guersant, Trousseau, Bouchut, Empis and Daviot / selected and translated by Robert Hunter Semple ; with a bibliographical appendix, by John Chatto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    In the year 1740, tlie nature of the pseudo-membranous exudation which lines the air-passages, was pointed out by Ghisi. In aU countries, physicians began to perceive that it was necessary to open dead bodies in order to ascertain the seat of diseases : it is even probable that after the new impulse given by Morgagni, they would not have failed to discover tliat Malignant Angina consists only in a gangrene of the mucous tissue, if Francis Home, by publisliing his “ Treatise on Croup,” had not suspended the progress of observation. It is diffi- cult to conceive how a work which contains oidy a small number of isolated and scattered facts, was capable of ohhterating the traces of the ancient traditions, and, for half a century, of preserving a great amount of influence over the opinions of practitioners ! Such is, how- ever, the fact. Struck with the most ordinary mode of termination of Malignant Angina, Francis Home persuaded himself that he had just met with an affection wliich had hitherto escaped the attention of his predecessors; he thought that he ought to give it the popular name under which he found it designated in a Scotch province: the novelty of his discovery was widely diffused, and the new deno- mination so fascinated aU persons, that it prevented them from re- cognizing a disease observed from the most remote antiquity, and which, in our own days, is accompanied by aU the symptoms wliich it has uniformly exhibited.