GENERAL DISORDERS OF NUTRITION. 



applied in vain. We certainly are justified in asserting that cod-liver 

 oil treatment cannot be substituted for the water-cure, nor vice versa; 

 but we may go still further, and declare that the oil is not only useless 

 in a case adapted for the water-cure treatment, but is absolutely per- 

 nicious ; and the same holds good regarding the hydropathic treatment 

 in a case where large doses of cod-liver oil are indicated. When we 

 consider that formerly the " decoctions of woods," laxative tisanes, an- 

 timonials, mercurials, and other drugs intended to stimulate the emunc- 

 tories into activity, were much employed in scrofula, and when, after 

 weeks of such treatment, a profuse flow of urine or of sweat was final- 

 ly induced, or, when the patient began to purge copiously, very good 

 results were sometimes obtained, it will be plain that this treatment 

 (the effect of which is to cause an intensely active destructive assimi- 

 lation and consumption of the tissues) can only benefit the class of 

 patients in whom these processes are in a state of indolence and inac- 

 tivity. The hydropathic treatment has a similar though far less per- 

 nicious influence, and is of signal benefit in the torpid form of scrofula, 

 that is, in that form where cod-liver oil is powerless, as I have repeat- 

 edly had opportunity of satisfying myself. 



Iodine and the mercurials are also generally regarded as good anti- 

 scrofulous medicaments. It is impossible to hold such views while 

 believing scrofula to consist in a cachexia, marked by a peculiar prone- 

 ness to disease, and evinced by a series of nutritive disturbances ; for 

 one cannot well suppose that the use of iodine or mercury can aug 

 ment the power of the system to resist noxious influences. I therefore 

 consider it improper to prescribe these articles solely on account of the 

 scrofula, and without fixed indications arising from the peculiarities of 

 the case. At the same time I will not deny that the cases are pretty 

 numerous in which the preparations of iodine and of mercury are indi- 

 cated. For further details, I refer to the books of local pathology and 

 therapeutics, surgery and ophthalmology, merely alluding to the great 

 benefit derivable from the internal and external exhibition of iodine in 

 the chronic hyperplasia of the lymphatics. In particular, where chronic 

 indolent enlargements of the lymphatic glands form the sole remaining 

 vestige of a former disease, astonishing advantage is often gained by 

 the use of the Adelheid springs and the Krankenheil waters. 8 



CHAPTER VII. 



DIABETES MELLITUS MELLITUEIA. 



ETIOLOGY. The pathogeny of diabetes still remams obscure. The 

 discovery of the physiologists, that sugar appears in the urine of animals 

 after puncture of the floor of their fourth cerebral ventricle, has not as 



