The Chicago Clinical Review Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AUTO-INFECTION IN DISEASES OP THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AND SUGGESTIONS AS TO ITS TREATMENT. By Daniel R. Brower. PROFESSOR OF MENTAL, DISEASES. MATERIA MED... more »ICA AND THERAPEUTICS IN RUSH MEDICAL COLLEGE AND PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN WOMAN'S MEDICAL COLLEGE AND THE POST-GRADUATE SCHOOL OF CHICAGO. The present is pre-eminently the time of the study of the etiology of disease just as the past has been characterized by an almost exhaustive study of anatomy, physiology and pathology. In this line of thought the subject of infection has been the most profitable, as it has been the most interesting of all investigations, most interesting because little by little it has brought to light the knowledge of micro-organisms that produce diseases, the causation of which was hitherto inexplicable; profitable because it has, and will result in the discovery of the conditions that arrest their development and the agents that will neutralize their toxic influence. Infection from without we may safely say produces the various forms of meningitis and cerebro-spinal meningitis, tetanus, hydrophobia, apute poliomyelitis, acute ascending paralysis, the puerperal and syphilitic diseases of the ner- yous system. The infections which arise from within are also important etiological factors in developing diseases of the nervous system. The principal source of this auto-infection is the gastro-intestinal tract. These micro-organisms may produce simple indispositions or the graver conditions of delirium, coma, eclampsia, excessive elevation of temperature, acho- lia, cardiac failure and paralysis of medulla oblongata. They bring about these results in several different ways. They may act mechanically by obstructing blood vessels of the lungs, kidneys and brain; they m...« less