An inaugural essay on zoo-adynamia ... / by Geo. J. Ziegler.

Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural essay on zoo-adynamia ... / by Geo. J. Ziegler. 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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    PREFACE. In presenting this essay to the profession, the writer is influenced by various considerations, the most important of which is the desire to be useful. He hopes to excite upon the subjects discussed more direct attention and deeper reflection than they have hitherto received, more with a view to the establishment of correct pathological principles and treatment than a desire for hypothetical or theoretical speculation. He has endeavored to arrange and classify a great number of morbid con- ditions, and to exhibit the fact, which appears to be very much over- looked, that there are many diseases induced by or dependent upon dif- ferent pathological conditions, and thus do away with the prevalent idea of the existence of specifics for such diseases, as, for instance, epilepsy, chorea, &c. In examining this essay, the reader will find that frequently the same disease is placed in two or more and sometimes all of the divisions therein made, as being dependent upon diflferent pathological changes, and hence require a diversified and varied, and, in many cases, totally opposite course of treatment.. The subject affords an opportunity to the writer to call attention to a much-neglected remedial agent, which has not received that favorable consideration in the treatment of disease to which he believes it to be entitled, viz., JVitrous Oxide Gas; and he has pointed out some of the deranged states of the organism to which it appears to be well adapted, and in which he believes it will be found highly useful. In consequence of the necessarily limited extent of an inaugural essay, the writer can merely point out examples of the conditions to which he refers, leaving further illustrations to be supplied by the suggestions of the mind of the reader. It is not pretended that all the suggestions or opinions which are ad- vanced in the following pages are supported by the test of experience, opportunity not having yet been afforded to substantiate them ; still it