A brief and intelligible view of the nature, origin, and cure of tubercular or scrofulous disease, illustrated by numerous cases : including, also, a manual for the application of electro-magnetism in this disorder / by John Fondey.

  • Fondey, John.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A brief and intelligible view of the nature, origin, and cure of tubercular or scrofulous disease, illustrated by numerous cases : including, also, a manual for the application of electro-magnetism in this disorder / by John Fondey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    rule, be also lacking in vigour. The absorbent glands con- stituting a part of the economy, and receiving their supplies from the blood, become, when this fluid is unhealthy, and more or less deficient in the elements of strength, weak also. Consequently they are, while thus debilitated, less able to resist those surrounding adverse influences, and internal causes of irritation, which determine undue quantities of blood to them; and hence congestions take place in them, with all those accompanying phenomena, of which we have treated at length elsewhere, and which go to make up tuber- cula or scrofula. Besides, where tubercular disease already exists in the organs, especially in the mesenteric glands, in which, as we have already seen, important changes are effected in the chyle, causing it to bear a closer resemblance to the blood, the composition and nature of this fluid must be con- siderably affected by this diseased condition of these blood- making organs, and, as a consequence, the structures gene- rally, but especially those parts which are predisposed to tubercular disease, must be impaired in their strength, and less able to resist the causes productive of this disorder. In such a state of the vital fluid, it is not singular if, the vital functions of the absorbent glands being impaired and affected, the products of these diseased glands should be remarkably altered, and in this way a sufficient explanation be afforded of many of the phenomena which arc attendant on tubercula; and this without the necessity of supposing the previous existence of tubercular matter in the blood. The true seat of the dis- ease is in the weakened absorbents: the imperfect blood af- fords the materials, which, elaborated under the action of such altered functional activity of these glands, gives rise to products which are characteristic of tubercular complaints. We may go still further in our explanations of tubercular disease, and describe the change which occurs in the electri- cal condition of the absorbent glands in this disorder. There are two electrical forces by which the various operations con- nected with the living organism are accomplished. These two forces are positive and negative in their character. The effect of the action of the positive is, to produce attraction and contraction; that of the negative, to produce repulsion and expansion. These two forces operate as vital powers in the lymphatic glands, as well as elsewhere; and when a proper relation exists between the action of the two; the gland