A treatise on the continued fevers of Great Britain / by Charles Murchison.

  • Murchison, Charles, 1830-1879.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the continued fevers of Great Britain / by Charles Murchison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    425/736 (page 389)
    ' flammataj ileum qua colo et coeco adhcerebat, sphacelatum :' iij. anotlier, ' In eo tenuia intestina inflammata vidimus : et ilei portio- ' nem m.agnam. versus colon, sjjliacelatam.' He maintained that the fever was not symptomatic of the local inflammation, but depended on a putrid substance in the veins. As to treatment, he recommended copious venesection, antim^ony, warm fomentations and clysters.^ Not long after, similar observations were made by Panarolus and Thomas BarthoKn. According to Panarolus, many cases of fever proved fatal at Rome in 1694, and on dissection, the intes- tines ' apparebant tanquam exusta.' ^ Now vaiious writers have compared the yellow sloughs often found adherent to Peyer's patches in pythogenic fever, to the superficial eschars resulting from the apj^lication of the actual cautery to a mucous surface.* About the same time, Willis, in England, described a fever which difiered from the febris pestikns (typhus), in being less contagious, in the absence of eruption, in its longer duration, in the imperfect crisis, and in its tendency to produce local compli- cations. He alluded particularly to a dysenteric form of fever accompanied by pustules and ulcers in the small intestines, which he compared to the external pustules of variola, an idea which French writers long afterwards claimed the credit of originating.'* Sydenham also described a fever as distinct from the febris pestilens. It varied greatly in its severity, lasted from fourteen to thirty days, and was characterized by great tendency to diarrhoea and vomiting, by delirium, epistaxis, etc. Purgatives were always injurious. He recommended bleeding and emetics at the com- mencement ; enemata of milk and sugar, opium to check the diarrhoea, and wine, when the fever assumed a hectic character. Baglivi, of Pome, in the latter part of the seventeenth centmy, described the hemitritceus of previous writers under the title of Feb7-is Mesenterica, and maintained that it was always accompanied by, and depended on, inflammation of the intestines and enlarge- ment of the mesenteric glands. It was of an irregularly remittent character, but was influenced by critical days, although, in most cases, it lasted from fourteen to twenty-one days. In some cases, he observed, there was scarcely any fever, when, all at once, the patient died from inflammation of the viscera. He recommended moderate venesection, baths, warm fomentations to the abdomen, and, above all, patience. Wine and bark, which he thought of ^ Spigelius, 1624, ' Panarolus, 1654, pent. iv. obs. 8. ™ Ritchie, 1855, p. 262. ° Willis, 1659, ed. 1682, p. 86. » Sydenham, 1685, ed. 1844, lib. i. 4, p. 39.