Lectures on diseases of the kidney, generally known as 'Bright's disease'; and dropsy / by S.J. Goodfellow.

  • Goodfellow, S. J. (Stephen Jennings)
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases of the kidney, generally known as 'Bright's disease'; and dropsy / by S.J. Goodfellow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    been more clearly proved in medicine than that the feverish and other obvious symptoms in those diseases which are the result of an animal poison in the system, are not due directly to the actual dose which was re- ceived from without, by exposure to the emanations of an infected person. This poison is in a state of active molecular change, and seems to excite the same active condition of change in the proximate principles of the blood, developing, not like the action of a ferment, a product unlike itself, but one exactly of the same cha- racter and properties—in fact, identical in all respects ; and the extent of this change and development evi- dently depends upon two conditions : one is the excessive activity or virulency of the thing introduced ; the other is the resistance to it offered by the blood* So long, therefore, as there is any poison in the system, it is important that no impediment should be interposed to prevent its exit from the body, and its dispersion and dilution afterwards, so that the patient may not inhale it again and again, and so be continually poisoned by his own emanations. This interruption it is—either * In making this difference between the action of the scarlatinal poison and that of an ordinary ferment, I do not wish to imply that all morbific agents engender disease by producing an action like this. On the contrary, I am induced to think that many morbific emanations may act as true ferments, giving rise to products definite in their com- position and properties, and to those phenomena which we observe in fevers and other diseases generally supposed to be contagious. There are stron Orounds foi believing that even the scarlatinal poison may at times be engendered in the body from inhaling, or being otherwise exposed to some mephitic emanations totally unlike itself. S