The Action of Medicines in the System / Or, on the mode in which therapeutic agents introduced into the stomach produce their peculiar effects on the animal economy

by Frederick William Headland

The diseases in which these medicines are employed are active blood-diseases.

This consideration need not detain us long, for in most cases the correctness of the statement is universally admitted.

Inflammation may be produced by a variety of blood-poisons, in each of which instances it partakes of a special character. Thus there are the syphilitic, scrofulous, and rheumatic inflammations. Simple inflammation may be caused by the injury of any part or organ, external or internal. It commences in the capillary vessels, and, if extensive, affects the blood generally, and produces fever. The blood then contains an excess of Fibrine, causing it, on coagulation, to exhibit the "buffy coat." There are also found in this, according to Mulder, some peculiar hyperoxides of Proteine. The colourless corpuscles are in excess; and among the red corpuscles is observed a peculiar tendency to arrange themselves together in rows. This is doubtless in some way connected with the morbid process going on in the blood.

Syphilis is evidently traceable to a special poison. This is recognised by the fact of its communication from one person to another. In the system of the infected person, if left alone and uncontrolled, it breeds and increases in quantity, works out all the mischief that it is capable of effecting, and may again be propagated to others, either by inoculation into the blood, or by an equally direct transmission to a tainted offspring.

Scrofula is also a blood-disease. All its manifestations are explainable on such a supposition. It is transmissible from parent to child; and it holds good as a general rule that hereditary diseases are seated in the blood. It is unaffected by any of those medicines that act only on the nerves. It produces a deterioration of the blood.

Arthritic disorders are always accompanied by a change in the blood. In Diabetes grape-sugar is present there in large quantities, and has to be excreted by the kidneys. Similarly, in Oxaluria, oxalic acid is found there; in Lithiasis, lithic acid in excess. In Rheumatic fever there are profuse sweats, in which the natural acid of the perspiration is enormously increased in quantity. It is stated by Berzelius to be lactic acid. Either this, or some other acid like it, must be formed in excess in the blood. In Gout we have sometimes a deposit of urate of soda in the cellular tissue opposite the small joints. The same salt has been occasionally found in the urine in Gout. Lastly it has been detected in the blood in that disorder by Dr. Garrod, and since him, by Dr. Bence Jones. (Animal Chemistry, p. 29.) Thus, in all these disorders there is a wrong in the blood.

Scorbutic diseases, i.e., Scurvy and Purpura, are characterized by a general poorness of the blood, with a special deficiency in the amount of Fibrine and of salts. There is a general tendency to hæmorrhage and ulceration all over the body. It has been observed that these diseases seldom occur in persons who are accustomed to a natural and mixed diet.

Periodic disorders are known to be attributable to the entrance into the blood of a peculiar aerial poison. The mild malaria of England excites a comparatively tractable ague; that of the Maremma and of the Pontine Marshes, in Italy, brings on very fatal fevers; while the remittents that are due to the exhalations from the ground on the West coast of Africa, and in the West Indian Islands, are of a still more virulent nature. Accurate observations have shown that they are all caused by the exposure of the system to this poison, and by its working in the blood.

With Convulsive disorders there is more difficulty. Although these diseases are manifested either by a derangement of the nervous system in general, or by a disturbance of the functions of the brain or spinal cord in particular, yet they are very rarely accompanied with an appreciable nervous lesion. When this is the case, as in the instance of Tetanus, which may arise from a mere irritation of the end of a nerve, they are extremely intractable, and are not at all under the influence of those blood-medicines which are useful in other cases. Epilepsy, too, may sometimes be due to a bony spicula or tumour in the brain, or to the irritation produced by intestinal worms in children; but these direct nervous causes of such convulsive disorders are to be considered as the exception, and not the rule. For they are more often connected with a diseased condition of the blood.