Negative diagnosis of surgical lesions of the stomach and cap / by Lewis Gregory Cole, M.D. Professor of Roentgenology in Cornell University Medical College.

  • Cole, Lewis Gregory, 1874-1954
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Negative diagnosis of surgical lesions of the stomach and cap / by Lewis Gregory Cole, M.D. Professor of Roentgenology in Cornell University Medical College. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    indica, or spikenard, specimens of which he had received from his brother in India, and described its medicinal uses, especially as an external application for abdominal pain.1 Blane’s professional life may be divided into three periods : the first while Physician to the Fleet (1780-83) ; the second when physician to St. Thomas’s Hospital and in practice (1783-95); and the third and remaining part of his active life in which he continued to practise, but was frequently consulted by the Government and others on various aspects of public health especially those concerning the Navy. The two earlier phases were a preparation for the third and most important, on which his reputa¬ tion mainly depends. In 1795, when Lord Spencer was first Lord of the Admiralty, he was appointed to join Dr. Eobert Blair as a Commis¬ sioner of the Board of the Sick and Wounded Sailors, and was thus enabled to bring about the reforms, designed to improve the sanitary conditions afloat, which he had urged upon the Admiralty fifteen years before. This office he held until 1802, when, as a result of the Peace of Amiens, the Fleets were considerably reduced. Shortly after his appoint¬ ment, an Admiralty order was issued enjoining the use of lemon-juice in the Navy. This came into force in 1796, and at once banished scurvy from the service afloat.2 Fresh fruit and vegetables had been known to the Dutch as prophylactic and curative agents for scurvy as far back as 1564, and had also been successfully employed in 1593 by Sir E. Hawkins in the “ Dainty,” and by Commodore James Lancaster in 1600; but all this had been forgotten until James Lind, afterwards Physician to Haslar, revived it in 1754. Blane, who gave the fullest credit to his senior, used fresh lemons, limes, and oranges in 1782 to cure scurvy in a fleet of twenty-eight ships of the line; and as the result of his advice scurvy was thus entirely prevented in H.M.S. “ Suffolk,” which made a voyage of twenty-three weeks in 1794. Otherwise Lind’s recommendations were almost neglected, and the delay of forty-one years before they were officially adopted might have been greatly prolonged, had it not been for Blane’s powerful influence. It is attractive though sometimes fallacious to interpret the speculations of former writers as the prophetic anticipa¬ tions of modern knowledge. But, with this caution in mind, there is some ground for crediting Blane with the germ of the modern conception that the absence of a vitamine is the essential factor in the aetiology of scurvy. In discussing the proximate cause of this disease, he remarked that its phenomena “ are circumstances all of which might naturally be expected from a deficiency of wholesome aliment and an absence of that active state of absorption and renewal, which in health are in constant requisition for the purposes of growth and repair. And it follows from this view of the subject that the operation of citric acid as a remedy is that of a specific stimulus to the absorbents, and not either as nutritious matter, or as a chemical antiseptic, according to the theories of the humoral pathology.”3 The difference between ancient and modern views 1 Phil. Trans., London, 1790, vol. lxxx, p. 658. 2 Scurvy, however, was seen in the merchant service from time to time, and Sir Alexander Armstrong, writing in 1858, stated that in the various Polar expedi¬ tions scurvy has always occurred to a greater or less extent (“Naval Hygiene and Scurvy,” 1858, p. 7). 3 “ Medical Logick,” London, 1825, p. 96.