The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner.

  • Jenner, William, Sir, 1815-1898.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The practical medicine of to-day : two addresses delivered before the British Medical Association, and the Epidemiological Society / by Sir William Jenner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    21/80 (page 11)
    degree to interfere with function do not occur in the valves of the heart till middle life, and rarely till advancing mid- dle life. The importance of these facts in enabling us to estimate the clinical value of special valvular murmurs is evident. The influence the acquisition of this knowledge has exerted on practice is well illustrated by reference to a paper in the 6th volume of the Transactions of this Society. In having regard to their clinical significance, the active inflammatory nature of these degenerative lesions of the valves of the heart is regarded as indisputable, and special treatment in accordance with that opinion is advocated. Again, the knowledge we have gained of these degener- ative changes has enabled us to appreciate at their real worth, to attach their true pathological significance— and so to influence diagnosis, prognosis and treat- ment—to those changes in cerebral textures which follow on degeneration of the coats of the arteries and capillaries; to appreciate clinically the importance and signs of those changes in the coats of the larger arteries which, when cir- cumscribed and considerable, by the diminution of elasticity and of contractility they necessitate, lead to local dilitations i.e. aneurisms; and to comprehend why aneurisms of the arteries of the trunk and extremities do not occur spontaneously in childhood or youth, why they are so often the concomitants of early though advancing age, and so rarely commence in old age. A second great advance in Medicine has resulted from the knowledge that elevation of the temperature of the