PAGE. Insanity, Alcoholic. Editorial, . . 281 PAGE. tion of Medical Department, Intro-Cranial Tumor, Extirpation of 369 | Nerves, Suture of moval of Ovarian Tumor, The profession have so long been entertained by the recital of exciting hunts after bacteria micrococci and other minute forms of life, that it may be a pleasant change to study a disease which has not yet been accused of harboring even a microbe. In this attempt to prove the germ theory, and seeking in it the cause of most pathological conditions, the tendency has been to overlook and slight the chemical origin of disease and the changes induced by faulty nutrition of the blood. The symptoms to which an impoverished or perverted blood supply may give rise are more tangible problems than the old conundrums: "Is the chicken the cause of the first egg, or is the egg the cause of the chicken, or is the bacillus the cause of the disease or its result ?" Read before Buffalo Medical and Surgical Association. In the treatment of disease by the advocates of the germ theory, the main endeavor is to find a germicide for that particular germ. This would be delightful therapeusis, if in so many cases the germ did not require a stronger lethal dose than does the patient. The student and believer in the chemical origin of disease finds in lithæmia the study of perverted physiological conditions brought on by a disobedience of nature's laws of eating, drinking and exercise. He must deal with a disordered nutrition of the tissues caused by a blood supply which contains certain noxious principles. These noxious principles the physician attempts to remove by change of diet, regulation of exercise, and such medicines as we shall hereafter mention. My attention was first drawn to this subject by an article published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Dec. 13, 1883, by Dr. G. H. Lyman, entitled, Tinnitus Aurium and Vertigo as Prominent Symptoms of Lithæmia. This article referred to Dr. DaCosta's paper on Nervous Symptoms of Lithæmia, published in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, Oct., 1881. From this the step was easy. Then Prout on Lithic Acid Diathesis, in 1843; Draper on Nature of the Gouty Vice, in '75, and Fothergill on Gout in its Protean Aspects; and Bulkley's essay on "The Gouty State in Diseases of the Skin." Before speaking of Lithæmia as a distinct chronic disease, let me invite your attention to the words of Prout on the Pathology of the Formation of Lithic Acid: "Lithic acid and its compounds we suppose to be principally derived from the albuminous principles, not only of the chyle and blood, but also of the albuminous textures of the body." When, on account of imperfect assimilation of alimentary matters by the stomach and primary assimilating processes, the chylous principles are not raised to that standard of perfection by which they are fitted to become component parts of the blood, he presumes the kidney has the power to separate them from the blood as Lithate of Ammonia. |