Cases and observations illustrating inflammatory effusions into the substance of the lungs, particularly as modified by contagious fevers / by William Aitken, M.D.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases and observations illustrating inflammatory effusions into the substance of the lungs, particularly as modified by contagious fevers / by William Aitken, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    exercise different efFects upon all; and therefore it is found, that at certain periods a combination of circumstances occurs in one or in a number of individuals, arising from causes which have always been in operation, which combination of circumstances is different from all other combinations of circumstances which have existed at any period in the life of the individual, or history of the spe- cies. In the condition of the individual, and his relation to the surrounding elements in which he lives, are to be found those agencies, or that agency, which gives rise to a distemper of a new and unknown form. Thus far the disease is new, the agency or agencies new, unknown, and it may be invisible, because the com- bination of circumstances are novel, but the causes which brought about the combination may have been in operation since the creation of man. The production of any epidemic disease is not due to atmospheric influences alone, nor to the morbific influences of ter- restrial emanations alone, but to the combined influence of both, and the existing constitution of the individual; all thus forming a combination of circumstances always changing, and always dif- fering from those immediately preceding. In this manner we account for the changes which the same dis- eases have at various times presented in their forms; and while spe- cies of human maladies, altogether new, such as small-pox, measles, and hooping-cough, add to the nosology of medical science, dis- eases that formerly existed altogether disappear. In the particular combination of circumstances'''' we are also to find an explanation, why every one exposed to any contagion does not become affected with the disease. In every individual those conditions which I have mentioned for the development of the disease do not exist; the relation of the individual's constitution to the surrounding elements still en- abling him to resist morbific influence, such as that of contagion, or of miasmata. The particular change in the system to which, therefore, I would ascribe the occurrence of local exudation, appears most pro- bably to consist in a vitiated condition of the blood, from the presence of some morbid matter, or from an excess of some natural constituent. Why an exudation depending upon such a general cause should locate itself in one organ rather than in another, is a question still undetermined. The most rational explanation ap- pears to me to bear some relation to the fact, that increased activity of function in an organ renders it more liable to exudations from the blood-vessels into its substance. The anatomical constitution of an organ also modifies, in some degree, any exudation into its texture, the tissues of which it is composed having som.e afl[inity for the morbid material in the blood, or the natural ingredient wliich is in excess. M. Raver, in noticing the morbid appearances of