Memoirs of John Abernethy / With a View of His Lectures, His Writings, and Character; with Additional Extracts from Original Documents, Now First Published

by George Macilwain

There are, however, many intimate relations between organs which do not depend on mere community of function. It is very important that the public should have clear views on this subject; and if they would only give a little of that attention which they so often bestow on things infinitely more difficult, there is no doubt many lives would be saved that are irremediably damaged, as Abernethy says, sometimes even before any symptoms have suggested that there is anything the matter.

But if there be a shadow of truth in Mr. Abernethy's views, and still more in those extensions of them to which they have naturally led, we may learn how necessary is that discrimination which traces disease to primarily affected organs; and how little success we may expect by treating the lungs, as the integral seat of disease, by specifics, or such remedies as tar, naphtha, cod-liver oil, various gases, &c. which come in and go out of fashion in a manner sufficiently significant of the claims they can have in a scientific point of view.

Mr. Abernethy also remarks on the comparatively restricted influence of scrofula in constituting consumption. "At one time," he observes, "I examined the bodies of many people who died of consumption." After describing other appearances which he found, he says, "the greater number were bestudded with larger or smaller tubercles, or made uniformly dense (consolidated)." He says, this disease (consolidation) is very insidious, that it is often established beyond the possibility of removal before it is suspected; but, he says, he thinks it might be known, for the capacity of the lungs is diminished; and suggests that this should be tested, by allowing a suspected case to breathe into a glass vessel over water, by which the quantity of air they can receive is rendered perceptible.

His remarks, too, on the treatment are highly interesting and discriminative, and will not only well repay attentive perusal, but that study which is necessary to the perception of their full force and beauty. When we have to sum up the various influences of the views of Abernethy, we may probably find space for a few facts on that which they exert on the treatment of the lungs and skin; and this not merely as affecting the health in general, but also complexion, and other conditions of these curious and important organs.

We are unwilling to dismiss this paper without directing attention to the illustration it affords of the erroneous views of those who imagine that Abernethy's investigations were confined to the digestive organs, and still less, of course, to one of them (the stomach). It would, on the contrary, be difficult to find any paper on physiology so comprehensive in its views, so simple and clear as to its object, so cautious and logical in its reasonings, so free from any bias, or with so little reference, either directly or indirectly, to what are usually understood by the digestive organs. On the other hand, it is an investigation which (as regards the relation which exists between two organs having a common function) is an exact type of what physiological investigation should be. For we have only to extend the idea of a relation which exists between two organs, to those which exist between all organs; to regard as their combined functions, the sustentation of the life and health of the individual, just as we have been regarding respiration, the common function of the skin and lungs; and we thus arrive at what must be the basis of any sound or comprehensive inquiry into the true relations of the various parts of the economy; by which alone we can interpret the phenomena of health and disease.

Moreover—however presumptuous the assertion may appear on the one hand, or however humiliating the view it implies of the present state of medicine as a science on the other—we must regard this investigation, in every philosophical sense of the term, as still among the "means untried" of the illustrious author whose words we have ventured to place at the head of this chapter.

[19] This statement does not hold in regard to Entozoa (animals living in the bodies of others), or at all events is not proved.

[20] The test for carbonic acid.

[21] A test for the presence of oxygen.

[22] It is in this paper that he uses the significant expression "ventilating the blood," which looks as if the refrigerating effect of respiration—and which we have endeavoured to show is the real, though perhaps not sole, purpose of it—had not wholly escaped his notice.