The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 354 of 653The causes of rhachitis are upon the whole involved in obscurity.It is certainly not correct to describe rickets as a consequenceecrofulosis, for not all children who are afflicted with rickets,scrofulous. With respect to rickets the following are. establishefacts: Rhachitis can only be diagnosed with reliable certaintybetween the first and second period of dentition ; it is preeminean affection of the lower classes, and more particularly of childthat were- brought up by hand; sometimes it seems hereditary.The almost constant coincidence with more or less intense digestidisturbances justifies the inference that the main cause of thisdisease is an abnormal condition of the assimilative functions.SymptontM and Course. Manifest symptoms of rickets arewith few exceptions preceded for some time by precursory symptoms. The children are afflicted with diarrhoea which is at firstmore slimy and afterwards watery; they lose their appetite or,which is still more common, they have perverse tastes, cravingblack rye-bread and potatoes; the abdomen is distended, thecomplexion sickly, the desire to move about is less, and yer, intlectually, the children are more matured than their age would seeto indicate. This lack of disposition to move about, which isparticularly prominent in the case of children that had alreadycommenced to walk about, is the first suspicious symptom whichis very soon, and sometimes almost immediately followed by painsin the bones and articulations. That these pains exist is evidentfrom the cries which the children utter, whenever an attempt ismade to have them move about. This circumstance is often interpreted as naughtiness, more especially since the children alreadycommence to cry at the mere approach of their parents whom theysuspect of an intention to make them move about. Soon thecharacteristic changes in the articular extremities of the bonesRhachitis. 417become manifest, more particularly, on account of the tliin muacular covering, at the lower articulations of the radius and ulnaat the lower articulation of the tibia, and at the sternal extremof the ribs. These articular extremities are enlarged, sometimesunequally bunchy, separated from the shaft by a more or less deepfold of integument The disease is almost always accompanied byemaciation, especially of the lower extremities, which causes theswelling of the articular extremities and the distention of theabdomen to become still more prominent. The painfulness of thearticulations is generally very great, scarcely ever hardly percetible; hence not only the pain, but direct weakness seem to be thcause why children absolutely refuse to walk.In the further course of the disease all those changes take placewhich depend upon the softness of the bones. The lower extremitiebend outwardly, if the children attempt to walk, whereas theyremain straight, if children are attacked who are not yet able towalk and have to remain extended in a recumbent posture. Thebone often looks as if bent at an angle. The ribs are pressed inthe sternum protrudes, giving rise to the so-called chickenThe upper extremities are less crooked, but bent a great deal morif the child crawls about on all fours. The vertebral column attimes assumes the form of cyphosis, at times that of scoliosis orlordosis; the form of the pelvis is likewise altered. The closinghttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt