Clinical lectures on the contagious typhus epidemic in Glasgow, and the vicinity, during the years 1831 and 1832 / by Richard Millar.

  • Millar, Richard.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on the contagious typhus epidemic in Glasgow, and the vicinity, during the years 1831 and 1832 / by Richard Millar. 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.

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    challenge some degree of attention; one, how far is fever subjected for its production, and phenomena, to the different seasons of the year; the other, how far it is ruled in its course by the influences of the sun and moon, and other Heavenly bodies. In Clinical Lectures, we require the aid of some nosolo- gical system of nomenclature, and arrangement. The one I have uniformly been accustomed to follow, is that of my old master Cullen. Accordincj to this nosologist, there exist three species of continued fever, viz., synocha, synochus, and typhus. Synocha is a sthenic distemper, and is exactly the same fever that attends his order of phlegmasiae, only without their essential accompaniment of topical inflammation. It may be doubted, I think, whether this species of Cullen have any real existence; but such inquiry here would lead us into too long details. His typhus is just the antipode of his synocha, for its leading marks are those of asthenia, or weak- ness. The heat of the skin, here, he says, is rarely augment- ed, and the urine little changed; the pulse, if not always quick, is always feeble; the sensorial functions are uniformly observed to be materially deranged, or embarrassed, while the general vigour of the body lies prostrate before the dis- ease. The synochus of Cullen is a mixture of these two preceding species; in its commencement a synocha—in its course, and termination, a typhus. Such, by many, has been considered the usual continued fever of Great Britain, and of other northern regions. Without altogether disputing the general truth of this position, it must, nevertheless, be kept in mind, that our epidemic shows far greater leaning to the latter, than the former type, and that so far from being always a synocha at the commencement, it, often, from the very starting, discovers no symptoms but those of pure, and genuine, typhus. It is this last distemper, exclusively, or the fever that springs from contagion alone, I now, once for all, apprize you, that is to engage our attention, and to form the subject of the ensuing lectures. After pointing out to you these distinctions of Cullen, it may, perhaps, seem superfluous to trouble you with the