Temperature in cholera / by Dr. L. Guterbock, Superintending Physician of Cholera Hospital, No. 2, Berlin ; translated and abridged for the 'Glasgow Medical Journal' by J.B. Russell.

  • Güterbock, Ludwig, 1814-1895.
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Temperature in cholera / by Dr. L. Guterbock, Superintending Physician of Cholera Hospital, No. 2, Berlin ; translated and abridged for the 'Glasgow Medical Journal' by J.B. Russell. 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.

    1/8
    TEMPERATURE IN CHOLERA. By Dr. L. Guterbocic, Superintending Physician of Cholera Hospital, No. 2, Berlin. Translated and Abridged for the “ Glasgow Medical Journal” by J. B. Russell, M.D., Fever Hospital. * The hospital in which the following observations were made was one of four devoted to the reception of cholera patients in Berlin. In ten weeks 820 cases were treated in it alone. The demands of so many sick of an urgent disease, their restlessness and agonized intolerance of restraint, and the time necessary to make each single observation trustworthy, which was at least half-an-hour, were all circumstances which made the study difficult. Still, the author believes that his paper, as much by the accuracy as by the number of the observations, will furnish a contribution not without value to thermometry, and thus, possibly also to our knowledge of the cholera process itself. The coldness of surface of cholera patients was first noted by touch; and the first use of the thermometer in the disease was to verify this observation. It is, however, impossible thus to ascertain the general state of the body. The extremities and external surface cool so quickly that the temperature of the limbs, skin, mouth, &c. is much lower than that of the trunk, and can yield no conclusion regarding that of the blood. We can only determine the temperature of the entire body by observations in one of its apertures, the vagina or rectum, which, more richly supplied with blood, does not suffer such a rapid loss of heat to the surrounding atmosphere as the external parts mentioned. Measurements in the vagina are most quickly taken, and not liable to be spoiled by the discharges, which render the rectum less available. Still less useful for ther- mometry in cholera, at least in its first stages, is the closed axilla, the temperature of which, compared with that of the vagina and rectum, shows a difference of one or more degrees. We were often, however, for various reasons, compelled to resort to the axilla. In the stage of reaction it is as trust- * From Virchow’s Archiv fur patholog. Anat. und Physiologie for January. The observations in the original are given in degrees centigrade, which have been reduced to Fahrenheit’s scale, for convenience of comparison with the measurements given hitherto in the medical writings of this country.—J. B. R.