A treatise on the nature, causes, and treatment of erysipelas / by Thomas Nunneley.

  • Nunneley, Thomas, 1809-1870.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the nature, causes, and treatment of erysipelas / by Thomas Nunneley. 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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    some of the worst cases of mischief following wounds have been where the injury has been received in the inspection of those who have died from phlebitis; not only uterine, but of the veins of the arm, occurring after venesection. VIII. There is a strong resemblance in the appearance of blood after death, from these complaints. The blood is generally semi- fluid, much altered in characters, and the lining venous mem- brane, even to the heart, is often stained of a deep dark red colour.* IX. The treatment, both local and general, is the same. It seems highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that in phle- bitis, erysipelas of the integuments, and other extensively diffused inflammations, some change is induced in the blood, which we can only partially recognise by its appearance and effects, and that in all these cases the change is of the same nature. For I think, when we consider how identical the general and local symptoms of disease may be, and yet after death the varying con- dition of parts found ; how much symptoms during life may vary, the appearances after death being nearly the same; and how one form of diffuse inflammation seems to give rise to others, it must be admitted as certain, that what we are frequently in the habit of regarding as the immediate cause of a disease, is in reality only a remote one, or possibly only an effect of some preceding and more important cause. We see changes in particular organs and sepa- rate tissues, and immediately suppose the diseases to be essentially distinct from each other; yet there is nothing improbable or irra- tional in the idea, that they are only instrumental in affecting the general symptoms by some farther change they may produce, according to the extent to which these organs are involved, or the influence their functions have upon the system in a healthy con- dition ; the local changes themselves being the sequents and con- sequences of some prior alteration, which has been effected upon the system generally, or upon the part itself. This change will probably be greater and maybe so much the more readily de- veloped, in proportion to the connexion the part has with the nerves or the circulating fluids. Thus, in the case of the veins, if there prevails but a very slight tendency to this diffuse inflamma- tion, it may be easily induced, as by venesection, which, if this tendency had not existed, would have been followed by no ill effect; or the cause itself may be so powerful that, under all cir- cumstances, and m all conditions of constitution, wherever it may be applied, the most violent and fatal diffuse inflammation shall be immediately set up, as from the bite of the rattlesnake ; while, on the contrary, it requires very great constitutional aptitude to- wards the development of this form of disease, in order that it p The internal surface (of the heart), particularly the valves, chieflv of the ^wS °f I'15 rV^ °f J *«**'• ^e mass 'o?ba beinj Vienna yi819 in 7^£m^lh«f vvho died in the Puerperal Epidemic in V lenna, 1819, in Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xxii., p. 84.