Inaugural dissertation on the connexion between some diseases of the liver and of the intestines : submitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules of graduation by authority of the Very Rev. Principal Lee, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by F. Beaugeard.

  • Beaugeard, F. O.
Date:
1855
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inaugural dissertation on the connexion between some diseases of the liver and of the intestines : submitted to the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, in conformity with the rules of graduation by authority of the Very Rev. Principal Lee, and with the sanction of the Senatus Academicus / by F. Beaugeard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    more numerous opportunities of studying dysentery in all its forms, has contradicted this absolute statement; and, indeed, we read in their works, that the dysenteric evacuations, at all events at the beijrianinor of the attack, are most often smiilar in all appearance to those produced by diarrhoea. Even in those forms which have been called sthenic or spo- radic, the stools, though they frequently assume such appear- ances as those described by Cullen, often do so only after having gone through a preliminary stage in which diarrhceic evacuations are present. In the other forms of the disease, named asthenic or hepatic, the discharges are always more or less abundant, and not always distinguishable from those of diarrhoea; and when they most approach the mucous and bloody characters, they are then foetid, slimy, or sanious.^ Impressed by those facts, Abercrombie came to the conclu- sion, that this higlily dangerous disease may he going on luith every variety in the appearance of the evacuations.^ But this apparently endless variety may, I think, be divided into two great classes, namely, 1st, that in which the stools are scanty, mucous, and bloody ; and, 2d, the other in which, whatever characters besides they may possess, they are more ahundant, cmd do not present pure mztcus and blood. These two sorts of evacuations may correspond with the two pri- mary divisions of dysentery of Copland, the sthenic and the asthenic. The first, we would take to be indicative of a state of the mucous membrane partaking more of the sthe- nic, simple inflammatory nature,^ whether they be present ^ Sir John Pringle, Observ. on the Diseases of the Army p. 227. Sir G. BalHnguU, Observ. on Fever, Dysentery, &c. pp. 46, 50. Twhiing, Diseases of Bengal, pp. 4, 5. Copland's Medical Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 695, et seq. Abercrombie, Path, and Pract. Researches on Diseases of the Stomach, &c. pp. 240, 241. Parkes, Remarks on the Dysentery and Hepatitis of India, p. 50. J. Brown, in Cycl. of Pract. Medicine, vol. i. p. 654. 2 Op. cit. p. 240. 3 Note.—The scanty, mucous, and bloody stools seem to us to have been made wrongly a pathognomonic sign of dysentery ; for we doubt very much whether they are at all characteristic of dysentery, a disease undoubtedly so peculiar in its nature—not to say so specific; or merely of a more or less exalted inflammatory state of some portion of the mucous membrane of the intestines. It is a question with us whether those cases which terminate favourably within a short space of time, which are preceded by well marked rigors, in which the pulse is more decidedly affected, and those peculiar stools present; and which