Historical notices, designed to illustrate the question whether typhus ought to be classed among the exanthematous fevers / [Charles West].

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Historical notices, designed to illustrate the question whether typhus ought to be classed among the exanthematous fevers / [Charles West]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE EDINBURGH MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL. 1. APRIL 1840. PART I. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. Art. I.—Historical Notices, designed to illustrate the ques- tion whether Typhus ought to be classed among the Exan¬ thematous Fevers. By Charles West, M. D., Graduate of the University of Berlin. For many years after Sydenham began to practise medicine, he believed that there existed but one form of fever. The pesti¬ lence of the years 1665 and 1666, however, impressed upon many diseases a new character, and was followed by fevers differing in many respects from those which had previously occurred. This diversity in the features of disease could not escape the notice of so acute an observer as Sydenham, and appears to have at first oc¬ casioned him considerable perplexity. From these difficulties he endeavoured to extricate himself by giving up his belief in the unity of fever, and by regarding each variation in form which the disease might exhibit as an essential change in its nature. Six different fevers are accordingly described by him as having occur¬ red within the short space of twenty years ; though, lest it should appear that he thus multiplied diseases without end, he proposed the ingenious theory that certain tribes of epidemic disorders con¬ stantly follow each other in one determined series or circle. The alteration in character which fever has undergone within VOL. LIII. HO. 143. T