Thoracentesis and its general results during twenty years of professional life : remarks made at a stated meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, held April 7, 1870 (by invitation) / by Henry I. Bowditch.

  • Bowditch, Henry I. (Henry Ingersoll), 1808-1892.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoracentesis and its general results during twenty years of professional life : remarks made at a stated meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, held April 7, 1870 (by invitation) / by Henry I. Bowditch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    usually understand that term, can be predicated of it. There is proof enough of weakened health, of dyspepsia, and its usual con- comitants, and after months of gradually deteriorating health phthisis did set in. But then the same result might have occurred without any attendance on any body. It is the most common way for jihthisis to develope itself. Confinement in any bad atmosphere, ill ventilated apartments, anxiety and depression of mind, irregular digestion, have often produced identically the same results. Then, again, they may say—If contagion had anything really to do with it, why did it prove so long in showing itself? Usually contagion shows itself soon. This was months in developing itself. Dr. Drake meets this argument, by saying that we really know- nothing of the length of time necessary for the incubation of phthisi- cal influences. One disease is promptly contagious, and runs its course rapidly. This is no reason that the same rapid course should be pursued in phthisis. On the contrary, all its phases arc slow. Why not its period of incubation ? In fact, have we not a proof of tills in the years that pass over before an hereditary tendency bursts forth ? The arguments against contagion drawn from the long period elapsing between exposure and the evident disease is there- fore really of small moment. But it falls wholly, when wc remember liow hydrophobia and other deleterious influences may remain dor- mant for an indefinite length of time—how miasmatic influences may remain years unknown, and then suddenly show tliemselves. But again, say the anti-contagionists, the nature of consumption is very difierent, certainly, from the majority of contagious diseases j there is no eruption as in smallpox, measles, scabies, syphilis, &c. Above all, the actual inoculations by Kostum, Le Pelletier, &c., proved abortive. To this the contagionists might reply—But there is whooping- cough, mumps, some sore throats, pleuro-pncumonia in animals, &c., from which there is not apparently any morbific matter recognizable by the senses. Yet these are capable of producing their kind. In regard to actual experiments of inoculation, it is asserted that they were not satisfactorily performed. Still further, the non-contagionists say—If contagion acts, why have we not had more cases in these many years, and why such a vast preponderance of married females amongst these patients ? Does contagion usually select women ? Why not rather suppose that the entire abandon with which women throw themselves into the duty of nursing; their total recklessness, at times, when attending on a dear friend, of the commonest rules of hygiene in regard to air, exercise, food and sleep—that these, conjoined with and acting upon an excessively sensitive nervous nature, are the causes of the disease in those cases ? We may thus argue pro and con upon the subject, and yet not arrive at exact and definite opinions, as to the precise matter in dis-