On the causes, nature, and treatment of palsy and apoplexy : of the forms, seats, complications and morbid relations of paralytic and apoplectic diseases / by James Copland.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the causes, nature, and treatment of palsy and apoplexy : of the forms, seats, complications and morbid relations of paralytic and apoplectic diseases / by James Copland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of these vessels — which I have stated above (§ 205.) to be so frequently connected with the production of both apoplexy and palsy — are favoured, if, indeed, they be not directly produced, by an excessive use of animal food, especially during advanced epochs of life, so I would recommend abstinence in this kind of food, not merely as a means of preventing a first attack, or a recurrence of an attack, but also as necessary to the removal of the paralytic state. There can be no doubt that highly azotised articles of diet often change the state of nutrition, not only in the several compound structures, but to some extent also in the coats of the blood-vessels, giving rise either to osseous, cretaceous, or earthy deposits, or to changes amounting to a fatty degeneration, or consisting of matters nearly, if not altogether, approaching those possessed of a fatty or oleaginous nature or appearance ; and that these changes favour the rupture of the vessels in which they occur, especially when the circulation is either excited or ob- structed by the causes of the disease above enume- rated. Hence it may be inferred, that the choice of food should be guided conformably with this view, whenever the supervention of apoplexy or palsy is dreaded, and subsequently to an attack of either the one or the other. 67G. During the treatment of the consecutive symp- toms, especially the paralytic, certain mineral springs, or factitious mineral waters, may be tried; but, like all other means, they should be prescribed appropriately to existing conditions of the digestive, assimilating, and excreting viscera, and to the states of the vascular system. When there is a gouty or rheumatic tendency in con- nection with the paralytic state, and with marked de- bility, the mineral waters of Bath, Leamington, or