Five dissertations on fever / by George Fordyce.

  • Fordyce, George, 1736-1802.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Five dissertations on fever / by George Fordyce. 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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    measure of heat, applied in the same manner, has shown that the apparent heat of the body, was 104° or 105°. — This kind of mea- sure of heat being totally unknown till the time of Van Helmont, and not being brought to any kind of perfection till long after his time, we cannot ground any reasoning upon it that can be at all connected with the ideas of Greece, or with any description of the feelings of mankind with regard to heat in fevers, where this instrument was not known or has not been employed. The author brings next into consideration the feel of the patient, with regard to heat and cold. Although his feel of heat is more fre- quent and of greatly longer continuance than his feel of cold in any fever, which is not fatal in a few hours ; yet he undoubtedly feels himself frequently excesively cold ; very often, at the beginning of the first attack of fever ; often at the beginnings of the attacks when fevers have intermissions ; not frequently, but not very uncommonly, in the middle of fevers, in which the patient, during the course of the disease, is never free from fever. Another person, applying his hand to the body of a person afflicted with fever, feels a part of the body hot sometimes, when the patient himself feels it cold: sometimes it may be felt to change from hot to cold in almost an instant, or from cold to hot in the same period of time ; and this by no means consonant, either to the feel of the person afflicted or to the thermometer. Heat, therefore, considering it in any way that it can be measured, cannot be taken as a pathognomonic symptom of fever; (that is an appearance which always takes place when a fever is present, and is always absent when a fever is absent.) It will hardly be thought necessary here to consider heat in the body, which is not shown by any of those measures which I have pointed out; and which has lately been conceived to exist in matter, without being sensible, by producing expansion of solids, fluids, or vapors, or sensible to the feelings of mankind or other animals. Some authors and practitioners have conceived, that cold followed by heat constituted a fever ; but every man who has been conver- sant with this disease, and has attended to its attacks, knows perfectly that it often begins without any cold, measured either by the ther- mometer, the sensation of the patient, or feel of a by-stander. A less degree of heat measured by the thermometer, the feel of the patient, or of a by-stander, we call cold. In some cases of fever the author has measured the heat, at the first approach of an attack, in all these ways, and very frequently throughout the disease, without ever finding a greater degree of cold than the ordinary heat of the body, from the first beginning til! the end of the disease. This will be undoubtedly confirmed by the observation of practioners and relations of authors. On the other hand, cold, considered in the sense the author has explained, has frequently taken place, according to all the above measures, in diseases, which no practitioner has ever considered as