Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH 147
Let us concede, if necessary, that the ultimate diagnosis
now possible, owing to the technique involved, is not
practicable for all practitioners. The facts are in no wise
altered thereby, nor need the lack of the final step make
the preceding less possible and intelligent. In fact, it is
to the general recognition of the facts, acquired with the
help of the microscope and test tube, that we must look
for an accumulation of clinical data which shall make
differential diagnosis possible without such technical means.
The result, however, hinges upon the clear comprehension
of
the fundamental relation.
Let us glance at the broad class of intoxications occurring
outside of the tissues, though within the body, as for example
in the gastro-intestinal tract. To such poisonings
I will limit the term auto-intoxication.
Existing as primary or accompanying states, they are
capable of inducing manifold indirect results, whose description,
even at this day, is prone to be based upon organic,
accidental expression, covered by a name, for the most
part, not suggestive of the etiology.
In such relations stand much of the bronchitis, arthritis,
enteritis, asthma, vasomotor irregularities, and nerve
manifestations, as in headache, or neuralgia, or heart irregularities.
It is not uncommon to have several of these
allied conditions coexisting, or alternating in the same
individual.
How long shall
we continue to regard them as entities,
ignoring their dependence upon absorption of toxins, or
toxic irritation of local surface, with reflex development
variously
distributed?
Passing to a third group of conditions, I
believe we may
find infinite interest in tracing the kinship that exists between
a multitude of now-called diseases, whose common
genesis is also intoxication, but as a result of perverted or
defective metabolism.
This group is the more interesting, as the more