The tongue as an indication in disease : being the Lumleian Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in March 1888 / by W. Howship Dickinson.

  • Dickinson, W. Howship (William Howship), 1832-1913.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tongue as an indication in disease : being the Lumleian Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in March 1888 / by W. Howship Dickinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    21/146 (page 9)
    derangements of the stomach and liver, blackness with adynamia, an ill-smelling coat with putridity of the humours, and so on, are to be replaced by a simple scheme in which the drying influence of air and the cleaning influence of food are principally concerned. To chew dry bread, says Piorry, is often a better way to clean the tongue than to swallow emetics and purgatives. The coat is simply dried saliva, which has been allowed to accumulate, and has no special significance. These views, in which truth and error are mingled, but of which the out- come is to ignore or attach little importance to the tongue as a symptom, have apparently suggested much of the scepticism of modern times, in which both truth and error may be discovered. Dr. Billing, in his well-known work on the 'Principles of Medicine' (4th edit. 1841), reflects the belief of his time in supposing that the condition of the tongue reflects that of the alimentary canal. The tongue, says Dr. Billing,' affords evidence of the state of the mucous membrane of the stomach and bowels, with which it is continuous.' He speaks of the tongue as naturally white before food, red after, and attributes the difference to the participation of the tongue in the condition of the stomach as regards its blood-supply, the tongue being pale from anemia when the stomach is ana3mic, red from congestion when the stomach is congested. In febrile diseases,