The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 545 of 653ever heightens the susceptibility to medicinal action, and very gerally leads 80 much more speedily to a fatal termination, for threason that the water accumulates again so much more rapidly.On this account the operation had better be deferred as long aspc^sible.[5. Scorbatns.Scurvy.Aitken defines scurvy as follows : " A morbid state ushered inby debility, lassitude, lowness of spirits, attended by fetor ofbreath, sponginess of the gums, which swell by irritation, till toverhang the teeth in palmated excrescences. Livid, subcutaneouspatches and spots appear upon the skin, especially on the lowerextremities among the roots of the hair. Spontaneous hemorrhagesmay take place from the mucous canals ; contractions of the muscles and tendons of the limbs occur, with pains, and sometimessuperficial ulcerations. An altered state of the albumen of theblood is associated with this condition, and the phenomena arebrought about by a deficient supply of the organic vegetable acidor of the salts of fresh vegetables."Scurvy has been the scourge of armies and navies from the earliest periods of human history. The Roman army under Germanicus was decimated by it after a long encampment in Germanybeyond the Rhine. The French army under Louis IX. in Palestinewas almost wholly destroyed by this plague. Thousands of sailorsand soldiers became its victims until Cook finallj'' succeeded inquering it ; on his return home in 1775, after a three years' cruhe brought back a crew of one hundred and twelve men in a soundcondition, having only lost one man by disease.l^ost'inortein Aiypearances. Poupart and Lind inform usthat the " principal effects of the disease were oL3erved in allin the cellular tissue of the extremities." Lind says that " effublood often lay in large concrete masses on the periosteum, whilethe bellies of the muscles of the legs and thighs seemed quite stwith it, often an inch in thickness." Water and blood were oftenfound efflised into the cavities of the chest and abdomen. Pouparfound that " on examining the joints, the epiphyses had entirelyseparated from the bones ; and in other cases that the cartilagesthe sternum had separated from their bones ; and bones that hadunited after being broken, very often separated again at the sitefracture." The spleen was found very much enlarged, soft andengorged with coagulated blood.650 Constitutional Diseases without Definite Infection.The phenomena of scurvy point to the blood as the seat of someessential alterations in this disease. All the leading eonstitnenof the blood seem to be present, but their normal proportion is dturbed and one or the other essential ingredient is found alteredin quantity and quality. Various opinions have been advanced byChristison, Garrod, and others, regarding the causes of scurvy ;it is sufficient briefly to state, that "one of the most evidentfrom the healthy condition is seated in the blood, which is alterhttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt