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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    tremities, or that the brain and nerves, have so far lost their energy, as to be unable to furnish, if such be their actual function, a due supply of heat to the system. But whatever be the theory, this is a symptom that must always be viewed with dreail, by every experienced practitioner.* Inequalities of temperature, in different parts, so that one portion of the body is found morbidly hot, while another is preternaturally cold, are believed to indicate danger, but the appearances are not of frequent occurrence. As to petechiae and vibices, I hold them of little account. By the elder writers, indeed, they seem to have been greatly dreaded, and were exalted into such importance, as to furnish one of the names (petechial) for our low fever, but so far as my own experience warrants, they hardly indicate increase of * As to the danger to be di-eaded from the extreme coldness of the limbs in typhus, there can be only one opinion, yet even when a sinking of the heat takes place in a far inferior degree, it is an unfavourable circumstance. During the late epidemics of Ireland, great attention was paid to the temperature of their patients by different physicians of the Dublin Hospitals, and this was the uni- form result of their observations :—they express more apprehension from the decrement, than increment, of the natural warmth. In quoting this authority, I caimot omit the opportunity of expi'essing the deep obligations I conceive in- curred by the whole medical world, for the numerous and able descriptions of typhus we derive from the Irish physicians, as in the Irish Medic:il Transac- tions, and the Dublin Hospital IJeports. For my own part, I gratefully ac- knowledge that I have found them of the utmost utility, both in guiding my practice, and in compiling the i)resent lectures. A long list of names might be enumerated here, which I set down just as they occur to my recollection, and without order or preference, as those of Perceval, Grattan, Cheyne, O'Brien, Macdonneli, Barr}', Stoker, Barker, Hagan, Bracken, Mills, Reid, Pickells, Blarsh, Stokes, Harkan. Such is the unhappy prevalence of typhus in Ireland, that compared to the experience of these gentlemen and others of their country- men, our own sinks into nothing. From 30th September, 1817, till 30th .September, 1819, there were received into the different Host)itals of the city of Dublin alone, no less than forty-one thousand seven hundred and seventj'-five patients with fever. Adding to these, the extra Hospital cases, the whole number in the metropulis, did not fall short of fifty thousiind. O'Brien in Irish Transactions, Vol. iii. pp. 452-33. What a field of practice, compre- hending every possible variety and contingency of the distemper, must hiave been here luid open. C