Erasmus Darwin

“ The typhus sensitivus, or sensitive fever with weak pulse, is frequently attended with delirium, which is caused by the deficiency of the quantity of sensorial power, and with variety of cutaneous eruptions.
Inflammation is caused by the pains occasioned by excess of action, and not by those pains which are occasioned by defect of action. These morbid actions, which are thus produced by two sensorial powers, viz. by irritation and sensation, secrete new living fibres, which elongate the old vessels, or form new ones, and at the same time much heat is evolved from these combinations. ”

“ Where the quantity of general painful sensation is too great in the system, inordinate voluntary exertions are produced either of our ideas, as in melancholy and madness, or of our muscles, as in convulsion. ”

“ The matter in pustules and ulcers is thus liable to become putrid, and to produce microscopic animalcula; the urine, if too long retained, may also gain a putrescent smell, as well as the alvine feces; but some writers have gone so far as to believe, that the blood itself in these fevers has smelt putrid, when drawn from the arm of the patient: but this seems not well founded; since a single particle of putrid matter taken into the blood can produce fever, how can we conceive that the whole mass could continue a minute in a putrid state without destroying life? ”

“ When the new fibres or vessels become again absorbed into the circulation, the inflammation ceases; which is promoted, after sufficient evacuations, by external stimulants and bandages: but where the action of the vessels is very great, a mortification of the part is liable to ensue, owing to the exhaustion of sensorial power; which however occurs in weak people without much pain, and without very violent previous inflammation; and, like partial paralysis, may be esteemed one mode of natural death of old people, a part dying before the whole. ”

“ In the pulmonary consumption, where common matter is daily absorbed, an irritative fever only, without new inflammation, is generally produced; which is terminated like other irritative fevers by sweats, or loose stools. Hence it does not appear, that this absorbed matter always acts as a contagious material producing fresh inflammation or new abscesses. Though there is reason to believe, that the first time any common matter is absorbed, it has this effect, but not the second time, like the variolous matter above mentioned. ”

“ Where the inflammation proceeds with greater violence or rapidity, that is, when by the painful sensation a more inordinate activity of the organ is produced, and by this great activity an additional quantity of painful sensation follows in an increasing ratio, till the whole of the sensorial power, or spirit of animation, in the part becomes exhausted, a mortification ensues, as in a carbuncle, in inflammations of the bowels, in the extremities of old people, or in the limbs of those who are brought near a fire after having been much benumbed with cold. ”

“ There are many irritative motions, which were at first succeeded by sensation, but which by frequent repetition cease to excite sensation, as explained in Sect. XX. on Vertigo. And, that this circumstance exists in respect to infectious matter appears from a known fact; that nurses, who have had the small-pox, are liable to experience small ulcers on their arms by the contact of variolous matter in lifting their patients; and that when patients, who have formerly had the small-pox have been inoculated in the arm, a phlegmon, or inflamed sore, has succeeded, but no subsequent fever. ”

“ The skin of the face is subject to more frequent vicissitudes of heat and cold, from its exposure to the open air, and is in consequence more liable to sensitive association with the stomach than any other part of the surface of the body, because their actions have been more frequently thus associated. Thus in a surfeit from drinking cold water, when a person is very hot and fatigued, an eruption is liable to appear on the face in consequence of this sympathy. ”

“ When the sum of general pleasurable sensation becomes too great, another kind of delirium supervenes, and the ideas thus excited are mistaken for the irritations of external objects: such a delirium is produced for a time by intoxicating drugs, as fermented liquors, or opium: a permanent delirium of this kind is sometimes induced by the pleasures of inordinate vanity, or by the enthusiastic hopes of heaven. ”

“ It would appear, that the vascular system of other animals are less liable to be put into action by their general sum of pleasurable or painful sensation; and that the trains of their ideas, and the muscular motions usually associated with them, are less powerfully connected than in the human system. ”

“ This sympathy between the stomach and the skin of the face is apparent in the eruption of the small-pox; since, where the disease is in considerable quantity, the eruption on the face first succeeds the sickness of the stomach. In the natural disease the stomach seems to be frequently primarily affected, either alone or along with the tonsils, as the matter seems to be only diffused in the air, and by being mixed with the saliva, or mucus of the tonsils, to be swallowed into the stomach. ”

“ It is much easier to conceive from this doctrine of associated or sympathetic motions of distant parts of the system, how it happens, that the variolous infection can be received but once, as before explained; than by supposing, that a change is effected in the mass of blood by any kind of fermentative process. ”

“ This also accounts for the abscesses in various parts of the body, that are sometimes produced after the inoculated small-pox is terminated; for this second absorption of variolous matter acts like common matter, and produces only irritative fever in those children, whose constitutions have already experienced the absorption of common matter; and inflammation with a tendency to produce new abscesses in those, whose constitutions have not experienced the absorptions of common matter. ”

“ I have frequently observed (and believe most practitioners have done the same) , that if variolous matter be inserted in the arm of a person who has previously had the small-pox, that the inflammation on the second or third days is much greater, than if they had not had the disease, but on the fourth or fifth it disappears. ”

“ The pulse is strong, quick, and full; for in this fever there is great irritation, as well as great sensation, employed in moving the arterial system. The size, or coagulable lymph, which appears on the blood, is probably an increased secretion from the inflamed internal lining of the whole arterial system, the thinner part being taken away by the increased absorption of the inflamed lymphatics. ”

“ When animal matter dies, as a slough in the throat, or the mortified part of a carbuncle, if it be kept moist and warm, as during its abhesion to a living body, it will soon putrify. This, and the origin of contagion from putrid animal substances, seem to have given rise to the septic and antiseptic theory of these fevers. ”

“ The inflammatory fevers, which are here termed sensitive fevers with strong pulse, are generally attended with some topical inflammation, as pleurisy, peripneumony, or rheumatism, which distinguishes them from irritative fevers with strong pulse. ”

“ Thus when an ill-conditioned ulcer separates a copious and thin discharge, by the use of any stimulus, as of salts of lead, or mercury, or copper externally applied, the discharge becomes diminished in quantity, and becomes thicker, as the thinner parts are first absorbed. ”

“ Add to this, that it is probable, that the insects, observed in the pustules of the itch, and in the stools of dysenteric patients, are the consequences, and not the causes of these diseases. And that the specific medicines, which cure the itch and lues venerea, as brimstone and mercury, act only by increasing the absorption of the matter in the ulcuscles of those diseases, and thence disposing them to heal; which would otherwise continue to spread. ”

“ And from hence it appears, why weak people are more subject to mortification than strong ones, and why in weak persons less pain will produce mortification, namely, because the sensorial power is sooner exhausted by any excess of activity. ”

“ Hunter has observed, that where a dead piece of bone is to exfoliate, or to separate from a living one, that the dead part does not putrify, but remains perfectly sound, while the surface of the living part of the bone, which is in contact with the dead part, becomes absorbed, and thus effects its separation. ”

“ Miss H.'s arm less inflamed than yesterday. On the 14th Miss L.'s fever great, and the eruption universal. The arm appears to be healed. Miss H.'s arm somewhat redder. They were now put into separate rooms. On the 15th Miss L.'s arms as yesterday. Eruption continues. Miss H.'s arms have varied but little. 16th, the eruptions on Miss L. are dying away, her fever gone. Begins to have a little redness in one arm at the place of inoculation. Miss H.'s arms get redder, but she has no appearance of complaint. 20th, Miss L.'s arms have advanced slowly till this day, and now a few pustules appear. ”

“ As many motions of the body are excited and continued by irritations, so others require, either conjunctly with these, or separately, the pleasurable or painful sensations, for the purpose of producing them with due energy. ”

“ Besides the pleasure, which attends the irritations produced by the objects of lust and hunger, there seems to be a sum of pleasurable affection accompanying the various secretions of the numerous glands, which constitute the pleasure of life, in contradistinction to the tedium vitæ. ”

“ For other animals neither weep, nor smile, nor laugh; and are hence seldom subject to delirium, as treated of in Sect. XVI. on Instinct. Now as our epidemic and contagious diseases are probably produced by disagreeable sensation, and not simply by irritation; there appears a reason, why brute animals are less liable to epidemic or contagious diseases; and secondly, why none of our contagions, as the small-pox or measles, can be communicated to them, though one of theirs, viz. ”

“ It is probable, that more certain proofs might have been found to shew, that common matter is infectious the first time it is absorbed, tending to produce similar abscesses, but not the second time of its absorption, if this subject had been attended to. ”

“ Why others may be received frequently. Contagions of small-pox and measles do not act at the same times. Two cases of such patients. 10. The blood from patients in the small-pox will not infect others. Cases of children thus inoculated. The variolous contagion is not received into the blood. It acts by sensitive association between the stomach and skin. III. 1. Absorption of solids and fluids. 2. Art of healing ulcers. 3. Mortification attended with less pain in weak people. ”

“ With increased action of the muscles. 2. With the production of new vessels by internal membranes or glands with fever. 3. With the production of new vessels by external membranes or glands with fever. 4. With the production of new vessels by internal membranes or glands without fever. 5. With the production of new vessels by external membranes or glands without fever. 6. With fever consequent to the production of new vessels or fluids. 7. With increased action of the organs of sense.
ORDO II. ”

“ Anorexia.Want of appetite. 2. Adipsia.Want of thirst. 3. Impotentia.Impotence. 4. Sterilitas.Barrenness. 5. Insensibilitas artuum. Insensibility of the limbs. 6. Dysuria insensitiva.Insensibility of the bladder. ”