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/26

12 RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. gout racking the tendons is relieved by the iodide, but gouty urine and gouty indigestion are un- touched. Lead-poisoning is also cured by the iodide, when it is exhibited in painful or paralytic conditions of the limbs, but colic is not benefited. The same drug has rescued from death in a won- derful way cases of acute hydrocephalus where the membranes of the brain were affected, but has apparently no influence when the cerebral sub- stance is inflamed. I should be disposed there- fore to assign a neural pathology to those cases of hysteria, and of ague, which I read have been re- lieved by these salts; for I suppose they will renew to health the sheaths of the nerves as well as the sheaths of the tendons and bones.

That which has above all things contributed to change of practice is the gradual course of change in our ideas of inflammation. The last great teacher who has published a monograph on the subject, Dr. Alison, depicts it as "a local increase of a vital property," ,"* and urges the use of blood- letting to subdue it, on the express ground that the evacuation "weakens the heart's action;"† to † Ibid., p. 98.
 * Library of Practical Medicine, vol. i. p. 64.