An inaugural dissertation on the influenza : submitted to the examination of the Rev. John Ewing, S.T.P. provost ; the trustees and medical professors of the University of Pennsylvania, in order to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine, on the eighth day of May A.D. 1793 / by Robert Johnston, of Philadelphia, member of the American Medical Society.

  • Johnston, Robert, 1750-1808.
Date:
MDCCXCIII [1793]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on the influenza : submitted to the examination of the Rev. John Ewing, S.T.P. provost ; the trustees and medical professors of the University of Pennsylvania, in order to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine, on the eighth day of May A.D. 1793 / by Robert Johnston, of Philadelphia, member of the American Medical Society. 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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    fhivering, by the febrile fymptoms appearing earlier, and being more confiderable in degree. It moreover gives a more fadcien and violent mock to the ftrength, and in many inftances produces a perpetual watching, follow- ed by a disorderly and uneafy ftate of the mind, material- ly different from the phrenetic delirium of the febris ar- dens incident to patients labouring under catarrhs from cold, or fuch like inflammatory difeafes. It is like wife diftinguifhed by its affecting more perfons at once, fpreading over a greater extent of country in a given time, and in being [more] contagious. The influ- enza is fometimes accompanied with miliary anderyfipela- tous eruptions, but the catarrh from cold is not. The latter is flow in its advances, feldom giving alarm until, perhaps, long after the exiftence of danger, whilft the former, for the moft part lefs dangerous, excites immedi- ate terror, as well by the number of fun&ions which it affefts at the fame inftant, as by the rapidity of its pro- grefs ; for in the influenza the tranfitions from apparently high health to ficknefs are often, as it were, inftantane- ous. Blood-letting, and other fuddenly debilitating remedies were feldom fo neceffary in this diforder as in the common catarrh, and fewer confumptions were the confequence of it, than might have been expecled from a common cold among an equal number of perfons. There is no difeafe to which the human body is liable, fo extenfive in range, fo fudden in attack, fo furious at the beginning, fo rapid in its courfe, and at the fame time attended with fo little danger.