Outlines of medical treatment : intended as a companion to The student's guide to medical diagnosis / by Samuel Fenwick.

  • Fenwick, Samuel, 1821-1902.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of medical treatment : intended as a companion to The student's guide to medical diagnosis / by Samuel Fenwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    you might reasonably expect,- you would allow the disease to subside without any meddling on your part. But if the heart should begin to fail, or the heat of skin become excessive, you must at once adopt such measiires as may stimulate the vascular system or lessen the ill effects of the high temperature on the blood and tissues. In order, therefore, to know when to interfere you must be acquainted with the course of each disease, with the symptoms that necessarily arise from it, and in what order and for what period they usually present themselves. No amount of reading will teach you the natural history of disease ; you can only acquire it by careful and accurate observation. In every disorder certain secondary diseases or complications are apt to arise. For example, you meet with pneumonia in measles, sore throat and acute inflammation of the kidneys in scarlatina. These complications often require careful attention, when it is not necessary to interfere with the original malady. But it is not uncommon for two or three complications to occur at once in the same patient. Thus, a person affected with kidney disease may have dropsy and erysipelas of the legs, and at the same time may be attacked with pleurisy or pericarditis. Under such circumstances the best rule is to direct your treatment against the affection that seems to be the most dangerous to life and most likely to be overcome. In the use of drugs there are a few points that are especially worthy of notice. Thus, they are always most certain in their action when applied directly to the affected structure. When they have to traverse the circulation in order to reach an inflammation of the skin or mucous membrane they are much less likely to prove efficient than when brought into im- mediate contact with the nerves and vessels of a diseased part, Never forget that most medicines require time to