On the sudoriparous and lymphatic glandular systems; the vital nature of their functions in preparing the conditions necessary to venous absorption, and the effect of their derangement in the production of the various diseases ascribed to malaria / by Robert Willis.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the sudoriparous and lymphatic glandular systems; the vital nature of their functions in preparing the conditions necessary to venous absorption, and the effect of their derangement in the production of the various diseases ascribed to malaria / by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    INFLUENCES periods of continued fevers; that it is implicated in their course and even participates largely in the general derangement characteristic of these diseases, is made manifest by the irregu- larity and partiality with which it comes into play, and by the peculiar smell of the perspiration; more than this, copious sweating, instead of pro\dng critical and preluding a happy issue in continued fevers, as it does in the paroxysms of an in- termittent, is often but a sign of a disastrous termination to the case. In the present state of uncertainty, as regards the origin of continued fevers, and the interesting subject which these diseases present in their endless variety as studios for the pathologist, I naturally conceive that a careful investiga- tion of the sudoriparous function in all their stages might yield a harvest of results that would be found of equal patho- logical interest and practical value. I have room in this place only further to hint at the key ^ which a knowledge of the sudoriparous function puts into our hands in interpreting the unquestionably beneficial effects that result from topical applications—fomentations, poultices, em- brocations, blisters, solutions of the nitrate of silver, tincture of iodine and of the muriate of iron, &c., &c.,—in such a variety of local diseases. These applications impressing the sweat glands immediately, modify in various ways, or even upon occasion arrest their function over limited areas, and so influence the disordered actions going on in the parts beneath, —now stimulating them into greater activity, and so relie^^ng torpor; and again repressing their action, and so abating such excitement as threatens organic change in the deeper seated tissues afiected. I began these essays by citing briefly, and in an English translation, the high authority of Berzelius, in regard to the prevailing ignorance of the end accomplished in the animal economy by the cutaneous exhalation, and I think I cannot do more to impress my reader with the importance of the sub-