An outline or synopsis of the new medical doctrines contained in Knapp's Researches on primary pathology and the origin and laws of epidemics / drawn up by the author.

  • Knapp, M. L. (Moses L.), 1799-1879.
Date:
1858
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An outline or synopsis of the new medical doctrines contained in Knapp's Researches on primary pathology and the origin and laws of epidemics / drawn up by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    depression, &c.; in fine, whatever impairs nutrition (Lind), produces the scorbutic state as the result. See p. 36, 277, 27S, vol. 2, and 2S7, vol. 1. This is the general sense of the profession. See the papers of Shapter, Stiff, Christison, Ritchie, Curran and others, quoted in vol. 2, written during the Irish famine. The ergo legitimately follows, then, that all diseases so arise. The identity of the “ primitive impair- ment of the blood, the general fluid of nutrition,” and the initial state of disease ambiguously styled “ diseased or per- verted nutrition,” with the scorbutic diathesis, is, therefore, a legitimate conclusion. Remark.—This proposition is not offered as a strict induc- tion, commencing as it does with an if, but rather to show up the incongruity of holding to the doctrine of the plurality of disease, the sui generis nature, and specific, independent cause of each, and that all differ essentially from each other and from scurvy, and still holding that all are the offspring of “ diseased nutrition !” The facts may be more logically presented as follows: The scorbutic diathesis is produced by defect of nutrition. Thousands of physicians, multitudes of reliable observers, among them many old authors of the highest repute, testify to the scorbutic origin of all forms of disease. Half the faculty so held formerly—many do still. The professional sense now is, that all diseases spring from “perverted nutri- tion.” No origin of disease other than in impaired nutri- tion, has ever been shown; no causes of disease other than such as impair it. The conclusion is warranted, then, from these premises, that all diseases arise from impaired nutri- tion, and are identical in their primary pathology with the scorbutic diathesis. The common sense or philosophic view of the matter is, that there is but one pathology, primarily, and this a state or condition of impaired nutrition. Whether, after disease has become localized in an organ, as in tuberculosis of the lungs, or has become constitutionally grave without localiza- tion, as in yellow fever, the pathology is essentially changed,