On the treatment of secondary syphilis / by J.L. Milton.

  • Milton, J. L. (John Laws), 1820-1898.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of secondary syphilis / by J.L. Milton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    OX THE TREATMENT OF SECONDARY SYPHILIS. Under the head of secondary syphilis, I propose comprising— merely, however, for the purpose of treatment—all forms of infection following upon chancre; from the wasting, lassitude, and glandular swellings which usher in the coming mischief, up to the latest stage of tertiary ulceration, or syphilitic disease of the internal organs or nervous centres. The reason for thus agglomerating symptoms so widely differing from each other in character and date, the treatment of the last phase of which is supposed by so many excellent authorities to be fundamentally distinct from the first, will be seen further on. I am not going here to re-open the old question about the supe- riority of simple over mercurial treatment, or of the latter over the former. After all that has been written, the dispute seems in much the same state as ever. The latest combatants who have appeared on the stage come forward, each in support of his own cause, as confident, as well supported by facts and cases, as any of his predecessors. This ever-recurring, endless conflict .of opinion seems so entirely independent of the merits or demerits of the point at issue, and so entirely dependent on a cause quite beyond our control—the in-born constitution of the human mind—that I should consider it waste of time to examine arguments controverted only to start into life with renovated vigour. In a systematic work, it would doubtless be the author’s duty to do so, however fruitless and unprofitable he might consider the task ; but in a paper intended to be strictly practical, any endeavour to reconcile such conflicting opinions as, that the worst symptoms of syphilis are never seen except when mercury has been given, and that equally bad cases are met with in persons who have never taken a grain of mercury or used it in any form—that mercury is a poison here, as maintained by Mr Syme and many others, and the sole antidote, as taught by numbers of excellent surgeons,—would be quite out of place. Neither will I attempt to state all the reasons which gradually led me to abandon the known methods of treatment, and to- sub-