Preventable Diseases

Woods Hutchinson

Description

Get a fascinating first-hand glimpse of the burgeoning fields of epidemiology and pathology in the early twentieth century with Preventable Diseases, written by accomplished English physician Woods Hutchinson. From headaches to cancer, the author covers a broad range of illnesses and describes the state-of-the-art treatment methods that were available at the time.

Sujets

• Médecine

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776675715
• Langue: English

Extrait

PREVENTABLE DISEASES
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WOODS HUTCHINSON
 
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Preventable Diseases First published in 1909 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-571-5 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-572-2 © 2015 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - The Body-Republic and its Defense Chapter II - Our Legacy of Health: The Power of Heredity in the Prevention of Disease Chapter III - The Physiognomy of Disease: What a Doctor Can Tell from Appearances Chapter IV - Colds and How to Catch Them Chapter V - Adenoids, or Mouth-Breathing: Their Cause and Their Consequences Chapter VI - Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake Chapter VII - Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake Chapter VIII - The Great Scourge Chapter IX - The Natural History of Typhoid Fever Chapter X - Diphtheria Chapter XI - The Herods of Our Day: Scarlet Fever, Measles, and Whooping-Cough Chapter XII - Appendicitis, or Nature's Remnant Sale Chapter XIII - Malaria: The Pestilence that Walketh in Darkness; the Greatest Foe ofthe Pioneer Chapter XIV - Rheumatism: What it is, and Particularly What it Isn't Chapter XV - Germ-Foes that Follow the Knife, or Death Under the Finger-Nail Chapter XVI - Cancer, or Treason in the Body-State Chapter XVII - Headache: The Most Useful Pain in the World Chapter XVIII - Nerves and Nervousness Chapter XIX - Mental Influence in Disease, or How the Mind Affects the Body Endnotes
Chapter I - The Body-Republic and its Defense
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The human body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten orsurpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop orsome animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absoluteprecision. As Huxley most unexpectedly remarked a score of years ago,"If a manufacturer of optical instruments were to hand us for laboratoryuse an instrument so full of defects and imperfections as the human eye,we should promptly decline to accept it and return it to him. But," ashe went on to say, "while the eye is inaccurate as a microscope,imperfect as a telescope, crude as a photographic camera, it is all ofthese in one." In other words, like the body, while it does nothingaccurately and perfectly, it does a dozen different things well enoughfor practical purposes. It has the crowning merit, which overbalancesall these minor defects, of being able to adapt itself to almost everyconceivable change of circumstances.
This is the keynote of the surviving power of the human species. It isnot enough that the body should be prepared to do good work underordinary conditions, but it must be capable, if needs be, of meetingextraordinary ones. It is not enough for the body to be able to takecare of itself, and preserve a fair degree of efficiency in health,under what might be termed favorable or average circumstances, but itmust also be prepared to protect itself and regain its balance indisease.
The human automobile in its million-year endurance-run has had to learnto become self-repairing; and well has it learned its lesson. Not only,in the language of the old saw, is there "a remedy for every evil underthe sun," but in at least eight cases out of ten that remedy will befound within the body itself. Generations ago this self-balancing,self-repairing power was recognized by the more thoughtful fathers inmedicine and even dignified by a name in their pompous Latinity—the vis medicatrix naturæ , the healing power of nature.
In the new conception of disease, our drugs, our tonics, ourprescriptions and treatments, are simply means of rousing this forceinto activity, assisting its operations, or removing obstacles in itsway. This remedial power does not imply any gift of prophecy on nature'spart, nor is it proof of design, or beneficent intention. It is ratherone of those blind reactions to certain stimuli, tending to restore thebalance of the organism, much as that interesting, new scientific toy,the gyroscope car, will respond to pressure exerted or weight placedupon one side by rising on that side, instead of tipping over. Let theonslaught of disease be sufficiently violent and unexpected, and naturewill fail to respond in any way.
Moreover, we and our intelligences are a product of nature and a partof her remedial powers. So there is nothing in the slightest degreeirrational or inconsistent in our attempting to assist in the process.
However, a great, broad, consoling and fundamental fact remains: that ina vast majority of diseases which attack humanity, under ninety per centof the unfavorable influences which affect us, nature will effect a cureif not too much interfered with. As the old proverb has it, "A man atforty is either a fool or a physician"; and nature is a good deal overforty and has never been accused of lacking intelligence.
In the first place, nature must have acquired a fair knowledge ofpractical medicine, or at least a good working basis for it, from thefact that the body, in the natural processes of growth and activity, isperpetually manufacturing poisons for its own tissues.
In this age of sanitary reform, we are painfully aware that the mostfrequent causes of human disease are the accumulations about us of thewaste products of our own kitchens, barns, and factories. The "bad air"which we hear so frequently and justly denounced as a cause of disease,is air which we have ourselves polluted. This same process has beengoing on within the body for millions of years. No sooner did three orfour cells begin to cling together, to form an organism, a body, thanthe waste products of the cells in the interior of the group began toform a source of danger for the others. If some means of getting rid ofthese could not be devised, the group would destroy itself, and theexperiment of coöperation, of colony-formation, of organization in fact,would be a failure.
Hence, at a very early period we find the development of the rudimentsof systems of body-sewerage, providing for the escape of waste poisonsthrough the food-tube, through the kidneys, through the gills and lungs,through the sweat glands of the skin. So that when the body isconfronted by actual disease, it has all ready to its hand a remarkablyeffective and resourceful system of sanitary appliances—sewer-flushing,garbage-burning, filtration. In fact, this is precisely what it doeswhen attacked by poisons from without: it neutralizes and eliminatesthem by the same methods which it has been practicing for millions ofyears against poisons from within.
Take, for instance, such a painfully familiar and unheroic episode as anattack of colic. It makes little difference whether the attack is due tothe swallowing of some mineral poison, like lead or arsenic, or theirritating juice of some poisonous plant or herb, or to the every-dayaccident of including in the menu some article of diet which wasbeginning to spoil or decay, and which contained the bacteria ofputrefaction or their poisonous products. The reaction of defense ispractically the same, varying only with the violence and the characterof the poison. If the dose of poisonous substances be unusually large orvirulent, nature may short-circuit the whole attack by causing theoutraged stomach to reject its contents. The power of "playing Jonah" isa wonderful safety-valve.
If the poison be not sufficiently irritating thus to short-circuit itsown career, it may get on into the intestines before the body thoroughlywakes up to its presence. This part of the food-tube being naturallygeared to discharge its contents downward, the simplest and easiestthing is to turn in a hurry call and cut down the normal schedule fromhours to minutes, with the familiar result of an acute diarrh[oe]a.
Both vomiting and purging are defensive actions on nature's part,remedies instead of diseases. Yet we are continually regarding andtreating them as if they were diseases in themselves. Nothing could bemore irrational than to stop a diarrh[oe]a before it has accomplishedits purpose. Intelligent physicians now assist it instead of trying tocheck it in its early stages; and paradoxical as it may sound, laxativesare often the best means of stopping it. It is only the excess of thisform of nature's house-cleaning which needs to be checked. Many of thepopular Colic Cures, Pain-Relievers, and "Summer Cordials" contain opiumwhich, while it relieves the pain and stops the discharge, simply locksup in the system the very poisons which it was trying to get rid of.Laxatives, intestinal antiseptics, and bowel irrigations have almosttaken the place of opiates in the treatment of these conditions inmodern medicine. We try to help nature instead of thwarting her.
Supposing that the poison be of more insidious form, a germ or aptomaine, for instance, which slips past these outer "firing-out"defenses of the food-tube and arouses no suspicion of its presence untilit has been partially digested and absorbed into the blood. Again,resourceful nature is ready with another line of defense. It was for along time a puzzle why every drop of the blood containing food and itsproducts absorbed from the alimentary food-canal had to be carried,often by a most roundabout course, to and through the liver, before itcould reach any part of the general system. Here was the largest andmost striking organ in the body, and it was as puzzling as it was large.We knew in some crude way that it "made blood," that it prepared thefood-products for use by the body-cells, and that it secreted the bile;but this latter secretion had little real diges