Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/25

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. I I without any morbid tissue being destroyed. The discases to which they are applicable are so various, that it appears at first impossible to find any com- mon point at which the successful physic has touched them all. The connection is truly not obvious between syphilis, aneurism, epilepsy, neu- ralgia, gout, ague, hysteria, lead-poison, and acute hydrocephalus. Yet in certain cases of all such ailments this class of drugs is useful, and we needs must discover wherein the kinship lies, or we can never attain to a rational use of the remedy. It has struck me, and indeed I usually act upon the thought, that they are related to one another in virtue of an imperfect vitality of the white fibrous tissues with which bones and trunk-nerves are sheathed. When a periosteum is tender from the syphilitic poison, iodide of potassium acts like a charm; while its influence on a chancre or sore- throat is scarce perceptible. The same may be observed in rheumatism, and in neuralgia. The bromide prevents with considerable certainty epi- Jeptic attacks which arise from injuries and jars to the pericranium, with less certainty obscure cases whose cause you cannot trace, and very rarely congenital or hereditary instances of the disease. It heals the tissue, not the epilepsy. Deep-seated