The Study of Medicine Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1823 Excerpt: ...in India, and is by the oriental writers, and even by Sir William Jones, justly distinguished from the juzam, which he tells us must not be confounded with the dal fit, or swelled legs described by the Arabian physicians, and very common in that country. It is also indigenous to the Polynesian isles, where it takes the name of yava-skin, as being supposed to originate from drinking the heating beverage called yava; and, like the gout among ourselves, is regarded in a sort of honourable light. The tropical bucnemia, like the puerperal, is occasioned by an effusion of coagulable lymph into the cellular membrane under the skin of the part affected, in consequence of inflammation of the lymphatics of the lower limb, and especially of the inguinal glands; the cause of which is perhaps different in different cases, but which is most commonly cold, operating upon a set of vessels peculiarly irritable, and especially so when affected with inflammation in tropical climates. The blood-vessels, and particularly those of the surface, are here also greatly relaxed; and hence the skin, instead of maintaining the paleness of the first species, very soon becomes suffused with a deep red or purple hue; while the saburral fluid, that exudes from the cutaneous exhalents, concretes, as its finer parts fly oft', into rough and sordid scales, and the skin itself becomes enormously thickened and coriaceous. The effusion is usually preceded by a febrile paroxysm induced by the glandular inflammation just noticed; and which, from the first, discovers a tendency to recur, though often at irregular periods, so as to resemble an erratic intermittent. Every fresh attack adds considerably to the effusion, and consequently to the morbid size of the limb, and exacerbates every symptom: an...