The modern practice of physic : exhibiting the character, causes, symptoms, prognostics, morbid appearances, and improved method of treating the diseases of all climates / by Robert Thomas.

  • Thomas, Robert, 1753-1835.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The modern practice of physic : exhibiting the character, causes, symptoms, prognostics, morbid appearances, and improved method of treating the diseases of all climates / by Robert Thomas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    assured, that every continued fever consists of a repetition of paroxysms, in the manner just mentioned. Now and then we meet with a fever consisting of only a single paroxysm, and which goes through its course in a few hours, as in the ephemera simplex; but this does not very frequently occur. Continued fevers usually last nearly of the same violence for several days, there being commonly an exacerbation in the evening, and a remission towards morning. The fevers of this species have been noticed to be of great diversity, by ancient nosologists ; but modern ones have limited them, very properly, either as they show an inflammatory irritation, or as they point out an affection of the nervous system, and in which the powers of sense and motion are particularly impaired. The distinctions of inflammatory and nervous fevers are, therefore, those now generally made use of; the former being known by the title of synocha, and the latter by that of typhus. A combination of these two genera seems, however, to be that form of continued fever which is most prevalent in this climate ; and this I shall treat of under the appellation of simple continued fever, or synochus. A variety of continued fever has been noticed by some physicians under the title of synochus biliosa, where, in addition to the other febrile symptoms, we meet with a redundant secretion and vitiated state of the bile, giving rise to a vomiting of dark green matter, or diarrhoea, and excited by an exposure to extreme heat of weather. In some cases, however, the bowels are very torpid, and the motions procured even by purgatives are of a hard consistence, and dark as pitch; but as this variety of fever seldom appears under a continued type, and rather assumes a remittent form, it ought, undoubtedly, to be considered as a remittent. Several species are comprehended under the head of typhus: they do not, however, imply any specific difference, but seem to arise either from a different degree of power in the cause ; from different circumstances of the climate or season in which they happen; from some peculiarity in the constitution of the person affected; or from a peculiar state of the fluids predisposing to putrescency. As hectic fever cannot be considered as an idiopathic disease, but merely as a symptom of some other, and of phthisis in particular, it is not noticed under a distinct head, but under that of pulmonary consumption. FEBRES INTERMITTENTES, ok INTERMITTENT FEVERS. The title of intermittent is applied to that kind of fever which consists of a succession of paroxysms, between each of which there is a distinct and perfect intermission from febrile symptoms, or an apyrexial period. Different names have been applied to this fever, according to the distance of time observed between the periods of its return. When