Statistical report on the Edinburgh epidemic fever of 1843-44 / by A. Halliday Douglas, M.D.

  • Douglas, A. Halliday (Andrew Halliday), 1819-1908.
Date:
[©1844?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistical report on the Edinburgh epidemic fever of 1843-44 / by A. Halliday Douglas, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    day ; and in 1 on the sixth day. The average for this period of life in these 5 cases is the fourth day. 7. There was above 60,1 case in which this crisis occurred on the fourth day. In consequence of the smallness of the number in the majority of these returns, it does not seem advisable to institute any com- parison between the different periods of life, with reference to any influence which age may exercise on this crisis. Repeated Relapse.—Relapse has been observed to occur as often as four and, I believe, five times. In none of my cases was it observed oftener than the second time, and this occurred in 11 cases. The sex of these was male in 4 cases, female in 7. The age was under 30 in 7 ; above 30 and under 60 in 4. The Date of the Second Relapse.—This was on the eighteenth day in 2 cases; between the twenty-second and thirtieth days in 6 ; on the thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth days in 3. These dates do not appear to differ in the sexes. The Duration of the Second Relapse. In 10 of these cases the duration of this relapse varied from one to five days. It was limited to one day in 3 cases ; to thirty hours in 3; to two days in 1; to three days in 1; to five days in 2. The remaining case—a female aged 38 of irregular habits—which relapsed for the 2d time on the twenty-ninth day, continued for ten days, with varying degrees of heat of the skin, dryness of the tongue, rapidity of the pulse, sleeplessness, and occasional general pains, without a distinct crisis, but a gradual decline of the symptoms, which were severe only during the first days of the relapse. No uniform and consistent relation between the direction of this second relapse and the date of its occurrence can be traced. The Crisis of the Second Relapse.—In this second relapse, as in the primary attack and first relapse, the crisis was for the most part abrupt and by perspiration. In three instances this form of crisis was not observed, the symptoms slowly and gradu- ally declining. The Phenomena of the Second Relapse.—No symptom of im- portance occurred in the course of any of these 11 second re- lapses. Had it not been that the mode of access and crisis was, for the most part, precisely as in the previous attacks, and that it was observed to occur more frequently than accidental feverish attacks are met with in the convalescence from the fevers we are in the habit of seeing, this second relapse might, in many cases, have been overlooked as a mere febricula. The data afforded by these 11 cases are quite insufficient for calculating with precision whether there existed any determinate relation between the second relapse and the date of the first crisis, the date of the first relapse, or its duration. I may state, however, that in 3 of these 11 cases the date of the first crisis is reported to have been as late as the eighth day in 2, and the