CLINICAL LECTURES
ON
ADDISON’S DISEASE.
________
LECTURE I.*
DISCOVERY OF THE DISEASE - CONSTITUTIONAL SYMPTOMS AND EXTERNAL
SIGNS - CASE ASSOCIATED WITH CARIES OF THE SACRO-ILIAC SYNCHONDROSIS -
CASES WITH TUBERCLE IN LUNGS - OCCASIONAL LATENCY OF DISEASE -
OCCASIONAL INTERMITTENT COURSE OF DISEASE - CASE ASSOCIATED WITH
CARIES OF VERTEBRÆ WITHOUT DISCOLORATION - CASE OF SPURIOUS
DISCOLORATION - NATURE OF ADDISON’S DISEASE - TREATMENT.
GENTLEMEN,-
Ten years ago, the late Dr. Addison,
senior physician
to Guy’s Hospital, published a monograph “On the Constitutional
and Local Effects of Disease of the Supra-Renal Capsules.”
Beyond the fact, which has been revealed by post-mortem examinations,
that these organs were liable to inflammation and suppuration,
to effusions of blood into their substance, and to cancerous and
tubercular degeneration, nothing whatever was known respecting
their diseases, or the influence which these exercised on the
general health, until the publication of that work. Dr. Addison
had for a long time observed, from time to time, cases evidently
belonging to one and the same class, characterized by very
remarkable symptoms, and to which, for want of a perfect knowledge
of their true nature, he applied the term idiopathic anæmia.
It was in the course of his endeavours to obtain additional light
on the nature of these cases, that he discovered the relation
between the symptoms he had observed and disease of the supra-renal
capsules; which relation he brought for the first time under the
notice of the profession in the work I have just mentioned. Dr.
Addison briefly stated the symptoms which he had found occurring
in connexion with supra-renal disease to be as follows:
“Anæmia,
general languor and debility,
----------------------------------------
* Reprinted from the Lancet, Vol. I., 1865.
B
[PREVIOUS] [NEXT]