DEPARTMENT OF LOCAL EXHAUST |
| DIRECTOR Carmine Gigante |
ABOUT
The originally mere local is enhanced into a general disease of the same nature, or gives rise to one of different attributes. The former contingency may arise from the alienation of the peripheric nerves, productive of the local anomaly, being transmitted to the nervous instruments presiding over the circulation,—in other words, to the nervous centres, and in particular to the spinal cord and the ganglia. Or else the conversion assumes the substantive form of infection, the noxious matter evolved by the original local disease, or its products, being received into the circulation. This last event occurs where the products of the local disease exhaust the blood of certain ingredients, for instance, of fibrine, of albumen, of serum, of salts. To this class belong, in like manner, the anomalies occasioned. by mechanical disproportion, such as the venous diathesis, cyanosis dependent upon disease of the heart or lungs, &c.
VIII. The presence of general disease may be the more safely inferred:
1. The more widely extended is the local disease over several uniform or dissimilar formations, and the greater its intensity.
2. The less the products of the local process are conformable with the character of the normal structures ;
3. The less the extent and nature of the local disease, or of the structures involved, however important in the organism, suffice to account for the general appearances during life and after death;
4. The more anomalous, compared with the alienation of the solids, are the secretions and excretions ; and,
5. The more the totality of the organism, in the absence of actual anatomical disturbances, seems cachectic and impaired.
6. The more marked is some anomaly in the circulating fluid, with respect to the quantity or quality of its component parts.
IX. General disease engenders in the most various organs and textures, according to their innate general or individual tendencies, either spontaneously or by dint of some overpowering outward impulse, a local affection which reflects the general disease in the peculiarity of its products. The general disease becomes localized, and, so to speak, represented, in the topical affection.
X. A general disease not unfrequently finds in its localization a perpetual focus of derivation, with seeming integrity of the organism in other respects. Recovery may, after a lengthened process, eventually take place through the exhaustion of materials at the local vent. Forced extirpation, on the contrary, or insulation of the locality, generally aggravates to a high degree the general disease, multiplying its points of localization.