On the Transmission from Parent to Offspring of Some Forms of Disease and of ...

Front matter

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

Preface To The Second Edition

The demand for a reprint of this work affords an opportunity of furnishing some additional facts relative to the commxinicability of syphilis in its secondary, as well as iQ it« more advanced stages, and also on the subject of treatment — ^two points on which authors are still far from being generally agreed.

In reference to the first of these questions, my experience during the past six years has served to confirm the belief before expressed, that not only is the matter of secondary sores capable of reproducing disease of similar character by inoculation; but that lingering taints, the existence of which is scarcely, if at aU recognisable by external phenomena, are also communicable through sexual, if not through other media, and thence liable to be continued in the offspring.

The recent experiments of Mr. Wallace leave no room to doubt the validity of this doctrine ; and Dr. WaUer of Prague has shown that, ia order to reproduce the phenomena of secondary accidents by inoculation, it is by no means necessary to use the concentrated poison as met with in form of cutaneous deposit, but that a much more diluted state of it is quite sufficient: this pathologist having succeeded in implanting the disease by inserting the blood of an infected person on the

VI PREP ACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

abraded skin of one previously in sonnd health. In the face of this fact, who will dare to say that the salivary and mucous secretions, or the cutaneous transpiration of a contaminated person, are innocuous?

On the subject of treatment the profession seem to be divided between the three methods practised severally by Mercury, Iodine, and Syphilization. The mercurial plan is that which has thus far afforded the most satisfactory results in my practice, and is indeed the only one upon which I would, guided by past experience, place any reliance ; while the iodine preparations, without the aid of mercury, even when given to the fdllest extent, have failed to produce more than amelioration of symptoms. Of syphilization I have no experience ; but its sufficiency bs a curative agent is thus far doubtftil.

The last chapter is devoted to the consideration of the alleged injurious effects of mercury. The observations recorded, intended to elucidate this subject, will serve to show that the troubles commonly attributed to the action of this drug, existed previously in cases where mercury had never been used, and were manifestly due to the imsubdued morbid principle, as they entirely disappeared after the effectual employment of the remedy, and did not return.

It is confidently hoped that, when the remedy now advocated shall have been more generally and efficiently tried, prejudice against it wiU cease to exist.

Manchester, June, 1857.

Preface To The First Edition

The study of uterine pathology is inseparably connected with the study of the phenomena of infant and embryonic life ; and he who devotes attention to the first must of necessity have many opportunities of witnessing the order in which the various evolutional and developmental processes take place, and in what manner these efforts are sometimes marred, and not seldom frustrated, by the agency of malign influences originating in human error.

In the course of my investigations into the nature and forms of uterine diseases, some of the results of which were recorded in a treatise published in 1847, my attention was early and frequently attracted to the effects which constitutional disorders, especially those of a specific nature, existing in the parents, appeared to produce upon the reproductive organs and upon the offspring. A mother so tainted, or who was allied to an unsound husband, was seen to produce an unhealthy child; such women were also found, upon careful inquiry, to abort more frequently than others; and in many cases of barrenness, the taint was discovered to prevail in one or

Vm PREFACE TO THE WEST EDITION.

both parties. Several illustrative examples were given in detail;

The subject, however, was no more than passingly noticed. At page 301 it was stated that, besides women suffering from uterine disease, a great number of infants and children also were made the subjects of inquiry, with a view principally to ascertain the period of the first appearance, as well as the characterizing features and the mode of development of inherited specific maladies, in cases where such maladies were known to exist, or were suspected to have previously existed, in the parent. And, although forming a very important and interesting branch of pathological study, it was mentioned that their consideration was not intended to occupy any place in that treatise, except so far as their occasional mention might be made serviceable in elucidating the character of the affections from which they appeared to have derived their origin.

At page 869 it was stated that a venereal affection in the wife might exist " as a consequence of secondary inoculation; the affection having lost its primary character in the first individual before being transplanted by contact upon the second." It was further said, at page 370, " The female system appears, upon superficial observation, to suffer less severely from the effects of syphilis than does that of the male. This seeming difference in their relative susceptibilities may be owing to the circumstance that the phenomena are differently manifested in the two sexes respectively ; but it is not improbable that, when the subject shall have been submitted to a more rigid investigation, the state of the

PEBFACB TO THE PIEST EDITION.

case will be found to be precisely reversed — ^the dis^ in some instances, continuing in active operation years where its existence was not suspected, the sigirs announcing its presence, although suflBciently inteUigible, having been altogether misinterpreted." This observation, it is needless to say, refers to uterine syphilis. Indeed, it is recorded in another paragraph that " evidences of syphUitic disease may be found in the lower part of the uterus long after the disorder was believed to have been driven altogether out of the system.*'

At page 372 the general evidences of constitutional syphilis in the female are stated to be " pallor of the countenance, languor, precarious appetite, loss of rest, hectic feverishness, lumbar and hypogastric pains, disordered secretions, and the appearance of the disease in the offipring." Certaru signs, thought to be pathognomonic, were also given, such as endo-metritis, a mottled or patchy aspect of the cervix uteri, aphthae of the cervbc, and warty excrescences. Several additional years of observation have served to confirm these statements, and have enabled me to furnish other particulars, which I doubt not will be found to be accordant with what may have fallen under the notice of those of my professional brethren who have paid attention to the subject, 4 But, besides confirming the statements relative to the transmission of the syphilitic taint firom parents to their children, even firom those parents in whom all external evidence of the disease had ceased to exist, the inquiry may alsb contribute towards the further elucidation of another fact of equal importance ; that, namely, of the derivation of certain forms of disease, commonly consi-

IHatvard ttrnverstOf

Cibtary of

tShz CDedtcal School

and

,1

XU PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

I do not by any means attribute the origin of all cases bearing but a remote resemblance to those directly resulting from syphilis, to causes of specific nature. My wish is, having satisfied myself respecting the specific sources of some, to direct more particular attention to the subject. I have known a family of children whose father suffered from both acute and secondary syphilis in early life, of which he was considered perfectly cured before marriage, but who had, notwithstanding, a most violent attack of secondary disease of long duration, in form of cutaneous eruptions and burrowing inguinal abscesses, commencing twelve months after marriage, and without any additional infection — his wife suffering at the same time under a train of symptoms of like nature. Two of the daughters of this pair died before the age of twenty years of phthisis, complicated with white swelling of the knee in both — diseases which had previously been unknown in the family of either parent. The two sons suffered from syphilis in the usual form during infancy and childhood, the traces of which existed in adult life. Tlie offspring of one of these bear evidence of the same taint in characteristic form. I was personally acquainted with these individuals, and had the early history from the father himself — a man of education and probity.

The perpetuation of sycosis is a fact sufficiently known. A case wiU be found in the following pages of its continuance to the fourth generation, on what I deem satisfactory evidence. In another instance where this form of disease existed with great severity in the second remove, in the person of a husband, the wife and off-

PREFACE TO THE BIRST EDITION. XllI

spring suffered from syphiKtic symptoms of an unmistakeable character, of which the latter perished. I have no means of determining the mode of origin of this malady in the first-named example ; and the evidence in the second was, nnfortunately, of a hearsay kind only, but it was strongly in favour of iis specific nature. In a third instance, however, in which the disease was well marked in a husband, and proved fatal both to his wife and a numerous offspring, the evidence of its syphilitic origin was conclusive, or at least as convincing as such kind of evidence commonly can be. This case, should its historical vaUdity be admitted, leads to the inference that the disease in the two preceding instances may have had a similar commencement.

With reference to the treatment of the class of diseases under consideration, my opinion, after a varied practice in this department, remains very nearly the same as it was four years since. Whether the taint be of recent or of ancient date, I have invariably found it necessary to pursue a decided course of mercurial treatment, aided, at the proper stages, by sea-water and mineral baths, change of climate if practicable, and a rigid system of hygiene practised through a long period.

The present treatise is intended to be an exposition of the results of additional practice in the department of pathology referred to in the preceding quotations. Several of the cases formerly recorded have since been kept under notice, and are here reproduced with extended historical particulars, serving to elucidate the peculiar habitudes of morbid poisons.

Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the

HV PREFACE TO THE PIMT EDITION.

condiisions arrived at in this work, there can be no doubt that the cases recorded in it, and which are a MthM transcript of the facts, are eminently suggestive, and that the subject is one which very nearly concerns the happiness and well-being of mankind.

Manohestsb, August, 1851.

Tbxatment 348