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Woods Hutchinson. Preventable Diseases
Preventable Diseases
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
THE BODY-REPUBLIC AND ITS DEFENSE
CHAPTER II
OUR LEGACY OF HEALTH: THE POWER OF HEREDITY IN THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE
CHAPTER III
THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF DISEASE: WHAT A DOCTOR CAN TELL FROM APPEARANCES
CHAPTER IV
COLDS AND HOW TO CATCH THEM
CHAPTER V
ADENOIDS, OR MOUTH-BREATHING: THEIR CAUSE AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER VI
TUBERCULOSIS, A SCOTCHED SNAKE
I
CHAPTER VII
TUBERCULOSIS, A SCOTCHED SNAKE
II
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT SCOURGE
CHAPTER IX
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TYPHOID FEVER
CHAPTER X
DIPHTHERIA
CHAPTER XI
THE HERODS OF OUR DAY: SCARLET FEVER, MEASLES, AND WHOOPING-COUGH
CHAPTER XII
APPENDICITIS, OR NATURE'S REMNANT SALE
CHAPTER XIII
MALARIA: THE PESTILENCE THAT WALKETH IN DARKNESS; THE GREATEST FOE OF THE PIONEER
CHAPTER XIV
RHEUMATISM: WHAT IT IS, AND PARTICULARLY WHAT IT ISN'T
CHAPTER XV
GERM-FOES THAT FOLLOW THE KNIFE, OR DEATH UNDER THE FINGER-NAIL
CHAPTER XVI
CANCER, OR TREASON IN THE BODY-STATE
CHAPTER XVII
HEADACHE: THE MOST USEFUL PAIN IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER XVIII
NERVES AND NERVOUSNESS
CHAPTER XIX
MENTAL INFLUENCE IN DISEASE, OR HOW THE MIND AFFECTS THE BODY
INDEX
FOOTNOTES
Отрывок из книги
Woods Hutchinson
Published by Good Press, 2019
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But the behavior of the white cells goes far beyond this. We are almost tempted to endow them with volition, though they are of course drawn or driven by chemical and physical attractions, like iron-filings by a magnet, or an acid by a base. Not only do all those normally circulating in the blood flowing through the injured part promptly stop and begin to scatter themselves through the underbrush and attack the foe at close quarters, but, as has been shown by Cabot's studies in leucocytosis, the moment that the red flag of fever is hoisted, or the inflammation alarm is sounded, the leucocytes come rushing out from their feeding-grounds in the tissue-interspaces, in the lymph-channels, in the great serous cavities, and pour themselves into the blood-stream, like minute-men leaving the plough and thronging the highways leading towards the frontier fortress which has been attacked. Arrived at the spot, if there be little of the pomp and pageantry of war in their movements, their practical devotion and heroism are simply unsurpassed anywhere, even in song and story. They never think of waiting for reinforcements or for orders from headquarters. They know only one thing, and that is to fight; and when the body has brought them to the spot, it has done all that is needed, like the Turkish Government when once it has got its sturdy peasantry upon the battlefield: they have not even the sense to retreat. And whether they be present in tens, or in scores, or in millions, each one hurls himself upon the toxin or bacillus which stands directly in front of him. If he can destroy the bacillus and survive, so much the better; but if not, he will simply overwhelm him by the weight of his body-mass, and be swept on through the blood-stream into the great body-sewers, with the still living bacillus literally buried in his dead body. Like Arnold Winkelried, he will make his body a sheath for a score of the enemy's spears, so that his fellows can rush in through the gap that he has made. And it makes no difference whatever if the first ten or hundred or thousand are instantly mowed down by the bacillus or its deadly toxins, the rear ranks sweep forward without an instant's hesitation, and pour on in a living torrent, like the Zulu impis at Rorke's Drift, until the bacilli are battered down by the sheer impact of the bodies of their assailants, or smothered under the pile of their corpses. When this has happened, in the language of the old surgeon-philosophers, "suppuration is established," and the patient is saved.
Or if, as often happens, an antitoxin is formed, which protects the whole body, this is largely built out of substances set free from the bodies of slain leucocytes. And the only thing that dims our vision to the wonder and beauty of this drama, is that it happens every day, and we term it prosaically "the process of repair," and expect it as a matter of course. Every wound-healing is worthy of an epic, if we could only look at it from the point of view of these citizens of our great cell-republic. And if we were to ask the question, "Upon what does their peculiar value to the body-politic depend?" we should find that it was largely the extent to which they retained their ancestral characteristics. They are born in the lymph-nodes, which are simply little islands of tissue of embryonic type, preserved in the body largely for the purpose of breeding this primitive type of cells. They are literally the Indian police, the scavengers, the Hibernians, as it were, of the entire body. They have the roving habits and fighting instincts of the savage. They cruise about continually through the waterways and marshes of the body, looking for trouble, and, like their Hibernian descendants, wherever they see a head they hit it. They are the incarnation of the fighting spirit of our ancestors, and if it were not for their retention of this characteristic in so high a degree, many classes of our fixed cells would not have been able to subside into such burgher like habits.
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