Medical adviser : a full and plain treatise on the theory and practice of medicine suited to planters and families / by Rezin Thompson.
- Thompson, Rezin.
- Date:
- 1860
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical adviser : a full and plain treatise on the theory and practice of medicine suited to planters and families / by Rezin Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.
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![pressure, and mental action ceases entirely, and the patient sinks into coma, and is dead to all thought or sensation. Similar events have been taking place in other parts of the system; the capillaries of the stomach have been weakened and congested, and caused compression of the gastric nerves, which at first, perhaps, only gave the sensa- tion of hunger, but which food would not satiate; an increased pressure will, however, cause them to complain in their usual way, viz.: by nausea, sickness, and perhaps vomiting. The same pressure upon the nerves of ordinary sensation, in the coats of the stomach, causes pain and sore- ness. The liver suffers in the same manner : at first, perhaps, the congestion only increases its natural secretion; a higher degree depraves it; and a still greater suspends all secretion, and distends its substance so as to present an evident fulness externally, with more or less soreness, pain, and sense of weight. All the other organs suffer in like manner, and complain in a way suited to the office and sensibility of each. The skin being exposed to the imme- diate inspection of the eye, we are enabled to examine its condition more readily and more accurately than any other organ. Now what are the developments presented? In the hot stage of fever, we see its vessels are evidently distended with blood, but it does not present the ruddy glow which we see follow active exercise in health; but it is dusky, like that presented by passing a ligature around a limb, so as to partially obstruct the return of the blood in the minute vessels. But it may be objected that this view of the nature of inflammatory fever is not consistent with the known cha- racter of the agencies by which it is successfully treated; that these are blood-letting, active purgation, nauseants, etc., all of which are debilitants. But an analysis of the modus operandi [manner of ope- rating] of these remedies in this particular case will show that their success harmonizes well with this theory. We will take venesection as a type of the class : it will be con- ceded, I suppose, that there is no actual increase of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21036974_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
