x
\
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
166
auditory
OX THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE.
come
By Robert Bird, M.D., Civil Surgeon, HowraJi. I.?In most cases of ordinary intermittent or of ordinary remittent fever in Howrah, the carbonate or aromatic spirits of ammonia will be found equal to reducing the heat of the body to the healthy standard. When these fail to do this, I combine them with sulphuric ether, and this combination fails to
rarely
should it
so
bring then
fail,
about the result which is desired; but if sulphurous acid drink be siren in
addition to the mixture of ammonia and failure will be the less often met with. tion of all of these remedies then
the addition of
does not
unfreqnently
a
has
sulphuric
disappointed
minims of diluted
few
ether,
When the administra-
hopes, prussic acid our
enable the medicine to succeed when
How is it that in one case a simple remedy is able to cure, and in another case a cure cannot be obtained, unless through the operation of several remedies mixed ? In answering this question, I will, in the first instance, to simplify the matter, suppose the bodies of all the patients before it had failed.
under examination
to be the same in every particular?i.e., the different tissues composing each are the same in all their
modifications?the
same in constitution, as in action. II.?Fever, which I regard ns the condition of our body
which all other diseased conditions no
are
other diseased condition can make
on
based, and without which
head,
is
recognized by the
presence of heat, greater than the natural heat in, at least, some portion of some tissue; but it rarely confines its manifestations to one tissue or to a modification of a tissue. On the skin it may show itself in circumscribed spots, or on one-half limb ( as in elephantiasis) ; but, as a rule, in addition to these local invasions'it is discernib'e elsewhere? there is a sense of heat in the mouth, or throat, or intestinal of the
trunk,
or
on
one
headache, or a burning pain in kidneys. Commonly, a large extent of the skin is hot, and a large portion of the mucous membrane of the gastro-intestinal canal also ; while not unfreqnently, the folded tissues of the glands are the seat of increased temcanal,
or
there is a hot
perhaps
the bladder and
At the same time I have met with many instances where the field of increased temperature on the skin could be covered with a tea-cup, and where abnormal heat could not
perature.
be detected elsewhere. when it
burns,
burns
We may, however, conclude that fever, in more tissues than one?in tissues
whose differentiation is different.
III.?Leaving prevail
the
question
of how diseased action
should
at the same time in tissues of different differentiation
part of tho paper,* I will here state that it appears to be a law, that the same remedy, having different relations to different tissues, acts on each differently ; and that consequently, a certain remedy when it checks fever in one tissue, it fails to check it in another. Thus ammonia may reduce tho temperature of tho skin in fever, while it fails to reduce the temperature of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels in fever. On the other hand, sulphurous acid cools tho stomach and bowels, and has less to be answered in the latter
power over the skin. These observations lead us to note tho relations which our different tissues bear to the different agencies outside of us?agencies to whoso operation on us wo owe all tho phenomena of life, and without which wo should die. Each tissue or modification of a tissue is more moved by this agency than moved, this it is and our
by that; nay, by by that it is scarcely moved at optic nerves, and not our auditory
I
have not been able to do this
on
powerfully
all. ;
Thus
light
moves
while sound moves our
account of want
of space.
r.erves,
more
placing
[August 1,
and not our
real to
us
if
we
optic.* picture
This
principle
1870.
'will be-
to ourselves the effect of
the secretion of our bladders in our stomachs. Urine
gives little trouble to our bladder, an organ composed of muscle, mucous membrane, and connective tissue ; but does it do so to our stomachs, another organ composed of muscle, connective tissue, and mucous membrane ? and thus it follows when disease has invaded more tissues than one, a remedy
that,
to do
a
general good
must be mixed.
IV.?In a note on sulphurous acid, published some time ago in this Gazette, I said I believed that substances 'which are
powerful
to absorb
radiant heat
in shut
chambers,
also
are
powerful to absorb radiant heat amongst the tissues of the and at the same time I
body;
pointed
out that three
ab-
powerful
sorbers of radiant heat, viz., sulphurous acid, sulphuric ether, and
ammonia,
are
also
powerful febrifuges.
After
a
longer experi-
ence, I am confirmed in this belief. Melloni was, I think, the first to show that the same heat,?that is, heat derived from the same
source?undergoes
a
different modification in
being passed
Thus he passed heat through a Locatelli lamp, incandescent platinum, and a ball of copper blackened, and he found that of one hundred rays from the
through
different substances.
lamps, seventy-four passed through a screen of Sicilian spar; of hundred rays from the platinum, and of another hundred from the copper, seventy-seven and sixty rays passed through the same a
screen, respectively. And in like manner he found that screens made from many other substances had each the power of arresting a different number of the hundred rays proceeding from each of these sources of heat.f Again, if we introduce a cylinder of
lime into the oxy-hydrogen light, the heat from this light acquires the property of traversing glass, which it scarcely had in any
degree
before.
From
these
simple experiments
appears that heat is modified in its transmission
through
it
sub-
stances, and that each substance modifies it differently, and gives to it, or withdraws from it, some property or properties.
In this we see another reason for giving mixed remedies in fever. The heat radiated by the skin is different from the heat radiated by the mucous lining of the intestinal canal,
and is controlled by ammonia; while the heat radiated by the mucous tissue of the intestinal canal, different from that radiated
by
the
skin,
is controlled
being by sulphurous acid.
Granted that ammonia and sulphurous acid check fever in this way, then it appears that they act in the same way as cold, when applied to the tissues, as, for instance, when a man is frozen in snow. In both instances motion is reduced or
stopped by absorption of the heat radiating from the tissues. V.?Heat is, therefore, to be regarded as the source of all motion, and variety of motion results from the action of heat on, or from the transmission of heat through, different substances. In this way light, electricity, and magnetism are to be regarded as modifications or transmutations of heat foe eacli and all of these forces, or, in other words, modes of motion can bo obtained from heat by transmitting it through certain substances, arranged in a certain way. Indeed, every modification of each force, and every force may bo regarded as
motion; or, in other a different mode of each force or modification of force is a peculiar motion or of matter which, when recognized, is named after the force
heat thrown into
words,
modification of force of which it is the expression.
This
of This difference is comparative not absolute, for the vibrations can be transmitted through our optic tracts, and the uodulatioDS of light have an effect on our auditory nerves. t Nouvelles recherches sur la transmission immediate de la cbalons rayonnante par differens corps solides et liquides; prtSseentees al'AcadeiUK* des Sciences le 31 Avril, 1331, pp. 6-13. *
sound
August 1, much
ON THE OEIGIN OF DISEASE.
1870.]
apprehended,
we
begin
motion or heat is different in another
locality. heat) from
Heat
one
to see how the aggregate of locality from what it is in which is merely a modifica-
(and light,
soon as it impinges on the globe, motion in each substance wliich it permeates: at the same time it is changed from what it mingles with. As we have it is not the same mode of seen from Melloni's
tion of excites
the
sun as
a
experiments,
motion when it emerges from a body as it is when it enters it, and on leaving a body it has acquired different properties from those which it had when it met it. The sun's heat,
therefore,
when in all its rays it is re-united in the atmosphere after the surface of the earth, and having been transmitted through the bodies on the surface of the earth is, in the aggregate, it fell upon the surface of the different from what it was when earth and the bodies on that surface. And thus we se? how the the
in one local
aggregate of heat aggregate of heat
the matters
or
atmosphere
in another local
heat modifiers of one
is different from
atmosphere,
locality
are
because different from
the matters or heat modifiers of another locality?the rocks, the trees, and grasses?the waters of this locality are not the same as they are in that other locality. "We are all familiar with the differences in the heats of different days differences which are not measured by the thermometer. These differences have
are
differences in the
in
intensity ; by means the quality of heat.
differing
instrument in
quality of heat, for we quality as surely as we have heats but as yet we are not possessed of an of which we can indicate easily changes
heats of different
YI.?Above I have stated that heat is the source of all and without heat motion would not be possible. This
motion,
tissues when a man is statement is illustrated in the human of his motions the frozen in snowdrift. Frozen, body stop; Heat is also that on whose these motions
re-appear.
thawed,
of ova depend, as is operation the growth and development and development familiarly shown in egg-hatching. Growth result in a
mass
of tissues, folded after a certain shape, which has and which is to be
certain tendencies and as
stores
capacities,
of motion of different modification.
regarded The friction of many phenomena.
agencies upon these tissues give rise to .Amongst those are feeding, digestion, assimilation, muscular action, and brain actions, which in their muscular expression In this we call, reading, writing, and so on. never-ending friction the removal of these tissues does not exactly correspond to the waste, and hence a difference. This difference friction of external agencies taking place in tissues from the and differentiation differentiation, name we goes upon them in the life of a being, furnishing many through many phases are expressed in the career of an shapes a'nd stages, which individual from the time of impregnation to the day of death. and death itself, are Uterine life, infancy, youth, old age, merely But there is also forms and results of differentiation. another external
to tissues, and form of differentiation which is common this is disease. Above I said that growth and development, as directed
by heat, lead to the storing up of modified force in the shape of tissues. Now while these tissues, when moved by external
agencies, display the phenomena of healthy life, they not unfrequently also, when acted on by the same, displny the phenomena of disease. Disease may be considered either a consumption of tissues, without renewal, a3 in the wasting of fever, or as the transformation of a tissue from a higher quality to a lower quality, a3 when the lining membrane of arteries change and lead to aneurism, or as when muscles undergo the change known as 'fatty degeneration. Growth not unfrequently takes place in these lower tissues, as in tumours.
107
VII.?Differentiation, then, is merely the expression of the agencies on a body of certain tendencies and capacities. If this body is an impregnated ovum, the friction of external agencies on it drive it to develope into a being composed of many tissues, each of which is different from the other, and every portion of each of which is different from every other portion ; tissues moreover which are connected with each other by means of inferior tissues which go on differing from the superior tissues by insensible degrees. The superior tissues are the nerves, the muscles, the bones, and the secreting tissues ; the inferior are spoken of generally as connective tissue. VIII.?Here then on the one hand we have a web of living tissue most minutely differentiated and folded into a shape which we designate human : this is the instrument. On the other hand, we have an atmosphere full of minutely differentiated heat capable of moving this web : this is the player; and the music action of external
or
discord express
the tissues.
the transmutation
(To
be
of heat into motion of
continued.)
\
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
166
auditory
OX THE ORIGIN OF DISEASE.
come
By Robert Bird, M.D., Civil Surgeon, HowraJi. I.?In most cases of ordinary intermittent or of ordinary remittent fever in Howrah, the carbonate or aromatic spirits of ammonia will be found equal to reducing the heat of the body to the healthy standard. When these fail to do this, I combine them with sulphuric ether, and this combination fails to
rarely
should it
so
bring then
fail,
about the result which is desired; but if sulphurous acid drink be siren in
addition to the mixture of ammonia and failure will be the less often met with. tion of all of these remedies then
the addition of
does not
unfreqnently
a
has
sulphuric
disappointed
minims of diluted
few
ether,
When the administra-
hopes, prussic acid our
enable the medicine to succeed when
How is it that in one case a simple remedy is able to cure, and in another case a cure cannot be obtained, unless through the operation of several remedies mixed ? In answering this question, I will, in the first instance, to simplify the matter, suppose the bodies of all the patients before it had failed.
under examination
to be the same in every particular?i.e., the different tissues composing each are the same in all their
modifications?the
same in constitution, as in action. II.?Fever, which I regard ns the condition of our body
which all other diseased conditions no
are
other diseased condition can make
on
based, and without which
head,
is
recognized by the
presence of heat, greater than the natural heat in, at least, some portion of some tissue; but it rarely confines its manifestations to one tissue or to a modification of a tissue. On the skin it may show itself in circumscribed spots, or on one-half limb ( as in elephantiasis) ; but, as a rule, in addition to these local invasions'it is discernib'e elsewhere? there is a sense of heat in the mouth, or throat, or intestinal of the
trunk,
or
on
one
headache, or a burning pain in kidneys. Commonly, a large extent of the skin is hot, and a large portion of the mucous membrane of the gastro-intestinal canal also ; while not unfreqnently, the folded tissues of the glands are the seat of increased temcanal,
or
there is a hot
perhaps
the bladder and
At the same time I have met with many instances where the field of increased temperature on the skin could be covered with a tea-cup, and where abnormal heat could not
perature.
be detected elsewhere. when it
burns,
burns
We may, however, conclude that fever, in more tissues than one?in tissues
whose differentiation is different.
III.?Leaving prevail
the
question
of how diseased action
should
at the same time in tissues of different differentiation
part of tho paper,* I will here state that it appears to be a law, that the same remedy, having different relations to different tissues, acts on each differently ; and that consequently, a certain remedy when it checks fever in one tissue, it fails to check it in another. Thus ammonia may reduce tho temperature of tho skin in fever, while it fails to reduce the temperature of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels in fever. On the other hand, sulphurous acid cools tho stomach and bowels, and has less to be answered in the latter
power over the skin. These observations lead us to note tho relations which our different tissues bear to the different agencies outside of us?agencies to whoso operation on us wo owe all tho phenomena of life, and without which wo should die. Each tissue or modification of a tissue is more moved by this agency than moved, this it is and our
by that; nay, by by that it is scarcely moved at optic nerves, and not our auditory
I
have not been able to do this
on
powerfully
all. ;
Thus
light
moves
while sound moves our
account of want
of space.
r.erves,
more
placing
[August 1,
and not our
real to
us
if
we
optic.* picture
This
principle
1870.
'will be-
to ourselves the effect of
the secretion of our bladders in our stomachs. Urine
gives little trouble to our bladder, an organ composed of muscle, mucous membrane, and connective tissue ; but does it do so to our stomachs, another organ composed of muscle, connective tissue, and mucous membrane ? and thus it follows when disease has invaded more tissues than one, a remedy
that,
to do
a
general good
must be mixed.
IV.?In a note on sulphurous acid, published some time ago in this Gazette, I said I believed that substances 'which are
powerful
to absorb
radiant heat
in shut
chambers,
also
are
powerful to absorb radiant heat amongst the tissues of the and at the same time I
body;
pointed
out that three
ab-
powerful
sorbers of radiant heat, viz., sulphurous acid, sulphuric ether, and
ammonia,
are
also
powerful febrifuges.
After
a
longer experi-
ence, I am confirmed in this belief. Melloni was, I think, the first to show that the same heat,?that is, heat derived from the same
source?undergoes
a
different modification in
being passed
Thus he passed heat through a Locatelli lamp, incandescent platinum, and a ball of copper blackened, and he found that of one hundred rays from the
through
different substances.
lamps, seventy-four passed through a screen of Sicilian spar; of hundred rays from the platinum, and of another hundred from the copper, seventy-seven and sixty rays passed through the same a
screen, respectively. And in like manner he found that screens made from many other substances had each the power of arresting a different number of the hundred rays proceeding from each of these sources of heat.f Again, if we introduce a cylinder of
lime into the oxy-hydrogen light, the heat from this light acquires the property of traversing glass, which it scarcely had in any
degree
before.
From
these
simple experiments
appears that heat is modified in its transmission
through
it
sub-
stances, and that each substance modifies it differently, and gives to it, or withdraws from it, some property or properties.
In this we see another reason for giving mixed remedies in fever. The heat radiated by the skin is different from the heat radiated by the mucous lining of the intestinal canal,
and is controlled by ammonia; while the heat radiated by the mucous tissue of the intestinal canal, different from that radiated
by
the
skin,
is controlled
being by sulphurous acid.
Granted that ammonia and sulphurous acid check fever in this way, then it appears that they act in the same way as cold, when applied to the tissues, as, for instance, when a man is frozen in snow. In both instances motion is reduced or
stopped by absorption of the heat radiating from the tissues. V.?Heat is, therefore, to be regarded as the source of all motion, and variety of motion results from the action of heat on, or from the transmission of heat through, different substances. In this way light, electricity, and magnetism are to be regarded as modifications or transmutations of heat foe eacli and all of these forces, or, in other words, modes of motion can bo obtained from heat by transmitting it through certain substances, arranged in a certain way. Indeed, every modification of each force, and every force may bo regarded as
motion; or, in other a different mode of each force or modification of force is a peculiar motion or of matter which, when recognized, is named after the force
heat thrown into
words,
modification of force of which it is the expression.
This
of This difference is comparative not absolute, for the vibrations can be transmitted through our optic tracts, and the uodulatioDS of light have an effect on our auditory nerves. t Nouvelles recherches sur la transmission immediate de la cbalons rayonnante par differens corps solides et liquides; prtSseentees al'AcadeiUK* des Sciences le 31 Avril, 1331, pp. 6-13. *
sound
August 1, much
ON THE OEIGIN OF DISEASE.
1870.]
apprehended,
we
begin
motion or heat is different in another
locality. heat) from
Heat
one
to see how the aggregate of locality from what it is in which is merely a modifica-
(and light,
soon as it impinges on the globe, motion in each substance wliich it permeates: at the same time it is changed from what it mingles with. As we have it is not the same mode of seen from Melloni's
tion of excites
the
sun as
a
experiments,
motion when it emerges from a body as it is when it enters it, and on leaving a body it has acquired different properties from those which it had when it met it. The sun's heat,
therefore,
when in all its rays it is re-united in the atmosphere after the surface of the earth, and having been transmitted through the bodies on the surface of the earth is, in the aggregate, it fell upon the surface of the different from what it was when earth and the bodies on that surface. And thus we se? how the the
in one local
aggregate of heat aggregate of heat
the matters
or
atmosphere
in another local
heat modifiers of one
is different from
atmosphere,
locality
are
because different from
the matters or heat modifiers of another locality?the rocks, the trees, and grasses?the waters of this locality are not the same as they are in that other locality. "We are all familiar with the differences in the heats of different days differences which are not measured by the thermometer. These differences have
are
differences in the
in
intensity ; by means the quality of heat.
differing
instrument in
quality of heat, for we quality as surely as we have heats but as yet we are not possessed of an of which we can indicate easily changes
heats of different
YI.?Above I have stated that heat is the source of all and without heat motion would not be possible. This
motion,
tissues when a man is statement is illustrated in the human of his motions the frozen in snowdrift. Frozen, body stop; Heat is also that on whose these motions
re-appear.
thawed,
of ova depend, as is operation the growth and development and development familiarly shown in egg-hatching. Growth result in a
mass
of tissues, folded after a certain shape, which has and which is to be
certain tendencies and as
stores
capacities,
of motion of different modification.
regarded The friction of many phenomena.
agencies upon these tissues give rise to .Amongst those are feeding, digestion, assimilation, muscular action, and brain actions, which in their muscular expression In this we call, reading, writing, and so on. never-ending friction the removal of these tissues does not exactly correspond to the waste, and hence a difference. This difference friction of external agencies taking place in tissues from the and differentiation differentiation, name we goes upon them in the life of a being, furnishing many through many phases are expressed in the career of an shapes a'nd stages, which individual from the time of impregnation to the day of death. and death itself, are Uterine life, infancy, youth, old age, merely But there is also forms and results of differentiation. another external
to tissues, and form of differentiation which is common this is disease. Above I said that growth and development, as directed
by heat, lead to the storing up of modified force in the shape of tissues. Now while these tissues, when moved by external
agencies, display the phenomena of healthy life, they not unfrequently also, when acted on by the same, displny the phenomena of disease. Disease may be considered either a consumption of tissues, without renewal, a3 in the wasting of fever, or as the transformation of a tissue from a higher quality to a lower quality, a3 when the lining membrane of arteries change and lead to aneurism, or as when muscles undergo the change known as 'fatty degeneration. Growth not unfrequently takes place in these lower tissues, as in tumours.
107
VII.?Differentiation, then, is merely the expression of the agencies on a body of certain tendencies and capacities. If this body is an impregnated ovum, the friction of external agencies on it drive it to develope into a being composed of many tissues, each of which is different from the other, and every portion of each of which is different from every other portion ; tissues moreover which are connected with each other by means of inferior tissues which go on differing from the superior tissues by insensible degrees. The superior tissues are the nerves, the muscles, the bones, and the secreting tissues ; the inferior are spoken of generally as connective tissue. VIII.?Here then on the one hand we have a web of living tissue most minutely differentiated and folded into a shape which we designate human : this is the instrument. On the other hand, we have an atmosphere full of minutely differentiated heat capable of moving this web : this is the player; and the music action of external
or
discord express
the tissues.
the transmutation
(To
be
of heat into motion of
continued.)
