Clinical observations on the pathology and treatment of continued fever : from cases occurring in the medical practice of St. Bartholomew's Hospital / by Edward Latham Ormerod.

  • Ormerod, Edward Latham, 1819-1873.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical observations on the pathology and treatment of continued fever : from cases occurring in the medical practice of St. Bartholomew's Hospital / by Edward Latham Ormerod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    It cannot be denied that there may be a real essential differ- ence between these forms, or that the knowledge of these dif- ferences would help towards treatment; far from it: it would be discouraging to think that this investigation must for ever be baffled at such a distance from the complete solution of the question; but such is at present the case with regard to what is called indiscriminately typhus or continued fever in London, the latter term being generally applied to the more active, the former to the lower descriptions of the disease. Assuming, on these terms, the identity of the diseases classed together as fever, we have to seek their common features of re- semblance, not in the local affections, which observation shews to be so very variable, but in some affection of the system gene- rally. The differences are striking enough to force themselves on the attention, but the points of resemblance have often to be looked for. There is certainly something very characteristic of continued fever in the heavy half-drunken aspect of the patients during the first days of the disease, and even in the pale vacant face presented during convalescence, which strikes the most casual observer; but a little mismanagement in the treatment, or, too often, the natural course of events, will bring out a much stronger resemblance among all the forms, and the identity of the diseases on which hung inflammation of the lungs, or of the bowels, or of the brain, an ailment too trivial to lay up for, or an attack threatening present death from its first commence- ment, shall be undeniable, most obvious when the case is most most hopeless. Lor each disease has its own form of death, and though fever has more than one, in the period or manner of its occurrence it stamps its character on them all. Death by fever with pulmonary affection has a character essentially dif- ferent from those of death by bronchitis, or pneumonia, or tress, from the country, while it is known that the subjects of the Fievre Typhoide have generally resided in Paris for the few previous months only. (Op. cit. II. p 357).