A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer and Harrington Sainsbury.

  • Ringer, Sydney, 1835-1910.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of therapeutics / by Sydney Ringer and Harrington Sainsbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/798 (page 24)
    be taken in the evening, as, even in diseases so severe as scarlet fever, the morning temperature may be nearly normal throughout the attack, whilst the evening temperature may rise to 103°; hence a morning observation, only, would lead to a great mistake concerning the severity, and possibly the nature, of the illness. ABNORMAL ELEVATION OF TEMPERATURE, OR FEVER, ETC. Many diseases, contagious and inflammatory, are accompanied by a rise of temperature. It must be borne in mind that the same amount of disease will produce in children a relatively higher tempera- ture than in adults, and that, moreover, individual or family pecu- liarities are apt to modify greatly the rise of temperature in disease. Some chronic diseases moderate the fever, thus in Bright’s disease and diabetes an inflammation may produce little or no rise of temperature. The derangement of function in a febrile disease is often mainly due to the rise of temperature which depresses the functions of the body, and if of much intensity or duration induces parenchymatous degeneration of the tissues, which likewise impairs function. The dangers, therefore, in a febrile disease are mainly dependent on the high temperature, and are in proportion to the amount of elevation ; so that we take the degree of fever as a measure of the depressive effect of the disease. The danger from a high temperature may, of course, be augmented by other circumstances, as, for instance, the diarrhoea of typhoid fever. It maybe said, perhaps, that the symptoms of fevers—general weak- ness, frequent, feeble pulse, loss of appetite, and delirium—are due to the elevation of the temperature, for by treatment which tends to reduce the temperature to the normal standard we can abate or remove all these symptoms. Moreover, the abnormal elevation of temperature not only depresses immediately and weakens all the bodily functions, but, as we have seen, in proportion to the height and duration of the fever, it further produces degeneration of all the organs, and this degeneration again greatly weakens their activity. If the symptoms are referable directly to the depressing effect of the febrile temperature, and indirectly to the degeneration it produces, it would seem a plausible supposition that the height and duration of the temperature should be an exact measure of the patient’s danger. A little reflection will soon show that this is but partially true, for though, no doubt, most of the symptoms arise from the high tempera- ment must be recollected that its depressing effect must greatly depend on the previous condition of an invaded organ ; thus, if