On Addison's disease : being the Croonian lectures for 1875 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians ; revised and illustrated by plates and reports of cases / by Edward Headlam Greenhow.

Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On Addison's disease : being the Croonian lectures for 1875 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians ; revised and illustrated by plates and reports of cases / by Edward Headlam Greenhow. 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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    corded; some in almost every country in which medical science is cultivated. Of these many are unfortunately so imperfectly reported that no positive conclusions can be di'awn from them as to the existence of Addison’s disease; and others again, which- present neither the clinical nor patholo- gical conditions described by Addison, are obviously not cases of Addison’s disease at all, although many of them have been published as such. But, on.the other hand, by far the larger number are true cases of the disease, having presented, in a more or less developed form, its characteristic clinical pheno- mena together with the particular lesion in the supra-renal capsules; whilst a very considerable proportion are what I may term ‘ typical ’ cases; that is to say, cases like Addison’s own, in which not only tlie constitutional symptoms and dis- coloration of skin were more or less fully developed, but in which, also, no pathological lesion of any importance was found, except the one particular lesion in the supra-renal capsules. Several of these typical cases have come imder my own care or observation,* and I pass now to the delineation of the living picture of Addison’s disease, as it has repeatedly presented itself to me in these and other cases; unmistake- ahle, almost at first sight, to one who held the key of the mystery supplied by Addison’s discovery. Progi’essive asthenia, often originating without any ap- parent cause and seldom dating from any definite period, an indescribable aspect of listlessness or depression, great languor and indisposition for exertion, remarkable weakness of the heart’s action, and small, feeble, compressible pulse, loss of appetite, irritability of stomach, nausea, and retching, are symptoms almost invariably present. There are usually more or less severe and frequent pains in the loins, hypochondria, or epigastrium ; and, not uncommonly, also tenderness on pressure in one or both hypochondria, with an almost spas- ' See Appendix A, pp. 101-125, Cases i. to vin.