The tongue as an indication in disease : being the Lumleian Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in March 1888 / by W. Howship Dickinson.

  • Dickinson, W. Howship (William Howship), 1832-1913.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tongue as an indication in disease : being the Lumleian Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in March 1888 / by W. Howship Dickinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Ehases, in the tenth century, describes the blackness of the tongue which occurs with plague, a concomi- tant of the disease which has since been often noticed. Dryness and blackness of the tongue, together with unquenchable thirst, were witnessed by Dr. Hodges in the Plague of London, as recorded in his ' Loimo- logia.' Avicenna, in the eleventh century, speaks like Paulus of roughness and dryness of the tongue as calling for local treatment, Indian salt, oil of roses, quince-seed, etc., and advises that those affected should not gape or sleep supine, for both these things dry the tongue. ' A tongue covered with blackness is not to be permitted, but is to be scraped and dealt with as already described, for otherwise noxious vapours will arise from it and cause inflammation of the brain.' If for ' inflammation of the brain ' we read delirium, we see here an instance of what is not uncommon—a sound observation connected with a theory which is not so. The concurrence of a black tongue with delirium is probably an experience as widely spread as typhus. On the whole, the allusions to the tongue in disease are fewer and slighter than would be ex- pected, considering the variety it presents; for we can scarcely suppose that the ancient physicians were so unlike their successors as not habitually to look at it as an act due to the patient, or that they could