Lectures on the acute specific diseases : being the Gulstonian lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, March, 1853 / by William Jenner, M.D.

  • Jenner, William, Sir, 1815-1898.
Date:
1853
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the acute specific diseases : being the Gulstonian lectures, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, March, 1853 / by William Jenner, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    divide them; what it is which constitutes their bond of union, and what are the grounds of their separation. In laoth, general constitutional disturbance precedes the occurrence of any local lesion ; both are attended in their progress by local affections ; both have a limited and definite course ; and, from those suffering from either, a something capable of inducing a disease identical with itself in all essential points is evolved. The general constitutional disturbance is manifested by increase of temperature, rapidity of pulse, loss of muscular power, and sense of malaise. The great peculiarity of the local affection is its disseminated character, (a) Thus, inflammation of the skin commences in innumerable points unconnected with each other. Many parts of the mucous membranes suffer at the same time, not of one tract only, but of several; and that not by extension, but by tlie establishment of separate centres of diseased action. Organs at a distance from each other, and not known to be especially related, suffer simul- taneously ; the spleen increases in volume, the lymphatic glands enlarge, and the lungs are frequently inflamed at several points of their substance. In both there is a more or less sudden commencement, and in both, after the lapse of a certain number of days, if the case be not fatal, restoration to health. The disease terminates usually on, and invariably before, a given day ; while certain lesions appear at a fixed time after the outset of the constitutional disturbance. Both have their origin in the action of a specific cause. Just as a plant produces a seed from which another plant essentially identical with the parent may spring, so from every case of these two diseases is evolved a something,— a seed which can develope a disease essentially identical with the parent disease. But by neither the seed of the plant, nor the seed of the disease, can this power of development be exercised, unless the conditions of development be given. An acorn could never develope into an oak, if it lay on a dry stone, exposed to the light of the sun ; nor the seed of small-pox develope small-pox if deposited in the blood of a man who had recently suffered that disease. The power of development would be there in both cases; the conditions of development would be wanting. In the power of propagating themselves, and themselves only, lies the test of the specific difference of plants. In the power of reproducing themselves, and themselves only, also lies the test of the specific difference of these two diseases. Could it be shown that from the same seed, under different conditions of development, might spring the oak (a) Quelques medecins ont compare I'dtat de I'mtestin {i.e., in typhoid fever) ^ celui de lapeau dans les affections exanth^inatique, mais je ne sache pas qu'aucun ait rapproch^ les unes des autres toutes les phlegmasies qui se montrent ainsi diss^minees, et deduit de ce rapprochement les conse- quences qui ressortent gdn^ralement de la comparaison de faits analogues. •—Chomel, Lecons de Clinique Medicate Fievre, Typhoide,^. 442.