much milder type;[1] erysipelas is more of a rarity; malaria and Malta fever have been run to earth; the late results of syphilis seem to me to be far less often in evidence;[2] lardaceous disease, so very common in our early days, is now seen but seldom; and we have come at grips with acute rheumatism, and let us hope with tuberculosis. Probably as much might be said of other diseases, and all will, I suppose, admit that good old age is both more prevalent and enjoyable.
It is true that the ills named belong to the great group of epiphytic disease that has been abolished in direct response to the researches of Pasteur and Lister, and that there is no evidence of any general move all along the line; but make away with even one large group of maladies, and how much of the morbid anatomy of the organs must alter too, and even then how little account would be rendered of numberless arrested purposes that make for the beginnings of other diseases!
Pathology not only changes but it shifts its ground, when we really pursue it. There is no more striking confirmation of this than a comparison of the practice of the Pathological Society of London forty years ago and now. Our meetings then were crowded with specimens of all kinds, a set discussion came only now and then as a sort of
- ↑ A man of my own age told me but the other day how he sadly remembers of this disease: that two coffins lay in his own house, and five in another across a field, all at the same time. One may hope that such a thing will never be seen again.
- ↑ I mean only to convey that late syphilis seldom now comes under my notice. What the neurologist may think with general paralysis and tabes dorsalis frequently in evidence I do not know, but tabes, at any rate, was wont to be considered a degenerative result of the scar of a bygone disease, taking years to mature, and then incurable; and it has yet to be proved that this is not so.
