The Works of William Cullen (Volume 2); Containing His Physiology, Nosology, and First Lines of the Practice of Physic with Numerous Extracts from His Manuscript Papers, and from His Treatise of the Materia Medica (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1827. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... BOOK III. OF THE IMPETIGINES, OR DEPRAVED HABIT WITH AFFECTIONS OF THE SKIN. MDCCXXXVII. I find it difficult to give any sufficiently correct and proper character of this order The diseases comprehended under it, depend, for the most part, upon a depraved state of the whole of the fluids, producing tumours, eruptions, or other preternatural affections of the skin. Although it be extremely difficult to find a general character of the order that will apply to each of the genera and species, I shall here treat of the principal genera which have been commonly comprehended under this order, and which I have enumerated in my Nosology. CHAP. I--OP SCROFULA, OR THE KING'S EVIL. MDCCXXXVIII. The character of this disease I have attempted in my Nosology; but it will be more properly taken from the whole of its history, now to be delivered. MDCCXXXIX. It is commonly, and very generally, a hereditary disease; and although it sometimes may, yet it rarely appears, but in children whose parents had at some period of their lives been affected with it. Whether it may not fail to appear in the children of scrofulous parents, and discover itself afterwards in their offspring in the succeeding generations, I cannot certainly determine; but believe that this has frequently happened. It appears to me to be derived more commonly from fathers than from mothers; but whether this happens from their being more scrofulous men than scrofulous women married, I am not certain. With respect to the influence of parents in producing this disease, it deserves to be remarked, that in a family of many children, when one of the parents has been affected with scrofula, and the other not; as it is usual for some of the children to be in constitution pretty exactly like the one parent, and others of th...