A dissertation on the remote and proximate causes of phthisis pulmonalis / by Andrew Hamersley.

  • Hamersley, Andrew.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on the remote and proximate causes of phthisis pulmonalis / by Andrew Hamersley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    searches, however, of more modern experimenters- have tended in no small degree to qualify such con- clusions. Those of Dr. George Fordyce and Sir Charles Blag- den, familiar to^every person, are among the most im- portant in evincing that exposure to a high degree of cold, after violent heat, is unattended with danger to the constitution.* This fact is likewise confirmed by the mode in which the practice of bathing is conduc- ted in Russia, and in several other countries, the in- habitants of which, to heighten the luxury, and add to the refreshment of immersion in heated baths, or long exposure to vapour of high temperature, imme- diately plunge into contiguous cold baths, or run in- to the open air, and, without the smallest covering to their bodies, roll themselves in snow.t In con- sidering a fact of this kind, there are two particular circumstances to be noticed, to wit, the acquired vi- gour of the subjects to whom the practice appertains, and the inherent powers of reaction possessed by the animal economy. The hardy Russian, whose every fibre is made tense by the severity of his climate, suffers no harm from such practices, as the principle possessed by the system just adverted to, is put in ac- tion in a frame capable of enduring the influence of the opposite media to which it is exposed. But this would afford no ground for believing, that the more tender frame of an inhabitant of the tropics, * Vide note C. f Essay on Phthisis Pulmonalis, by John Reid, M. D.