Curative medicine, or, Purgation, directed against the cause of diseases : discovered by Doctor Pelgas, acknowledged and analyzed in this work / by Doctor Leroy ... Translated from the 12th ed., by Gabriel Paul ... To which is added, the opinion of Doctor Renard.

  • Le Roy, Louis, active 1820.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Curative medicine, or, Purgation, directed against the cause of diseases : discovered by Doctor Pelgas, acknowledged and analyzed in this work / by Doctor Leroy ... Translated from the 12th ed., by Gabriel Paul ... To which is added, the opinion of Doctor Renard. 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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    is ulcerated. In this case, the cause of corruption infiltrates itself successively into the mass of the humours, into the cavities and the ways of circulation, and progresses with more or less rapidity in all its ramifications. As we write for the people, that is, especial- ly for that portion of patients who do not know the quantity of gas which enters into the composition of the air they breathe, we avoid scientific names: for, we think, they care very little whether the cor- rupt parts kept in dissolution in the air, and which may occasion dis- eases hy inspiration, absorption, or contact, are called azote, mephit- ical air, or atmospherical rhoffettes. It is certainly less essential to know how or by what means the hu- mours of a sick person have been corrupted, than to know how to apply the proper remedy to the disease in following a true and safe principle. It is also important to acknowledge, that health would not have been destroyed without depravation, corruption or putrefaction of the humours; and that, once in such a state of degeneration^ they may bring a number of accidents, and even death itself, CHAPTER III. OCCASIONAL CAUSE OF DISEASES^ Internal Diseases, According to the common doctrine of disorders, the occasional cause is always mistaken for the efficient cause; that is, the matter which occasions the pain, or that kind of suffering which character- ises the disease of an individual, and of which no mention is made. It is a vacuum in reasoning: it is a very dangerous error. What can we infer from that silence of doctors towards their patients, except that the true cause of disease is yet unknown to them. They indicate as the cause of diseases, the divers accidents or events which might have happened to the patient, either before or during his sick- ness. Among a great number of examples, let us select one. They say that the sudden passage from heat to cold, is the cause of a dis- ease. No doubt but that sudden transition may have produced a suspension of the matter of transpiration; but it is that very mat- ter, called suppressed sweat, or any other name, which is the cause of the disease. The cold which immediately succeeded to the heat is the occasional cause and may have brought the accident. If the patient had not been in a state of humoural plenitude more or less depraved, he would have experienced no sort of pain from that transition. Put the question to himself, he will tell you that many a time he has been exposed to such transitions without the least accident. An attentive observer will remark in a thousand circumstances, that patients and other per«onf are in gearch of causes: and that,