A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / By Wm. Ingalls.

  • Ingalls, William, 1769-1851.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A case of typhus or ship fever, with remarks / By Wm. Ingalls. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    u Porro, hie obiter observari velim, pulsuum velocitatem solam, pyrexiam vel febrem adesse nequaquam semper indicare ; cum a causis externis plurimis pulsus fit naturali velocior, sine morbo, sive quavis functionum lsesione. Hisce de pyrexia^ charactere quaestioni- btiSj in charactere a nobis hie dato, quantum potuimus, prospectum esh Sed, in aliis classium et ordinum characteribus adeo felieem esse vix licet; et in characteribus plerisque, si ad species plerasque character recte adhiberi possit, paucas exceptiones non moror. Uti- lem plerumque fuissapaihi sufficit, ubique perfectum fore non spero.” In the following commentary on the term Pyrectica, in his Nosolo¬ gy, Dr. Good, from the** complexity ” and contrariety of the symp¬ toms, boldly declares a full and correct definition of fever cannot be attained. “ Pyretica is here used in its fullest collective sense, and conse¬ quently as importing ra nv^erixa or Ttv^i^ra, ‘ febres,' or ‘mor'bi febriles ; ’ terms better understood, perhaps, by themselves than by any definition that has ever beeji offered. In reality, no writer seems to have been fully satisfied with his own definition ; and it is not extraordinary, thereforejUftat he should seldom have given satis¬ faction to others. The difficulty proceeds from the complexity of the symptoms that enter into tb4 character of a fever, and the con¬ trariety of many of them to ead* other in different stages of it, and the occasional absence of some *that in other instances appear to constitute its leading features.” Dr. George Fordyce, in one oFfhe best treatises on fever extant, says :—Fever, of all other diseases, is that one in which a pathog¬ nomonic symptom is least to be depended upon.” “ The great difference which prevails among febrile diseases, and the frequent changes occurring in the symptoms of the different kinds of fever, make it very difficult to offer a definition of fever that will be applicable to all its varieties.”-—(Hartmann’s Acute Diseases, by Hempel.) One great obstacle to a precise and satisfactory description of continued fever, is, in considering ephemera, synocha, synochus, and typhus, to be identical in their nature, and that they have a common origin ; another obstacle, perhaps as great, is in consider¬ ing synochus (which is the type that continued fever most com¬ monly assumes in this city) to be a mixed or compound disease. It is not a little remarkable, while Sauvages, Vogel and Cullen,