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.

    7/18 (page 285)
    attack usually began about 3 or 4 p. m., with shivering, followed by heat, extreme pain in the head, pain and tenderness about the epigastrium, and intense thirst. On the second, or at latest on the third day, delirium came on, and like the other symptoms was aggravated towards evening. The tongue became dry and very black, and the lips were chopped. Some patients suffered much from colic, while others laboured under pleurisy, and spat blood. The disease ran its course in from fourteen to twenty days ; the occurrence of deafness during its progress was considered to be a good sign, and was far from unusual. The parotid glands often swelled and suppurated ; but the worst form of crisis was the foi- mation of a carbuncle on the tarsus, which often produced gangrene of the extremities. Conradinus saw feet amputated in ten cases on this account at Vienna. In addition to these symptoms, however, spots like flea-bites appeared on the skin of all the patients. . In some cases these spots were of larger size than in others ; occasion¬ ally they occupied the whole body, but usually were confined to the chest, the spinal and intrascapular regions and the arms ; and they were observed to assume a livid or blackish colour m dying persons. , . •, It may appear superfluous to seek for evidence to prove, that these spots, though termed petechise, were different from those to which that name is now applied ; for the situation in which they were seen corresponds to that occupied by the measly eruption o y phous fever, and the changes in colour which they presented under different circumstances could not have occurred in rea petee liae. To place this point, however, beyond doubt, it may be well, even at the risk of being tedious, to quote from Sennertus, a tion of the spots which were at that time called peteehise. e- techise enim habent conjunctam febrem, quse ab alns plensque ma- culis abest. Nec elatae, longse, vel magnse sunt, sed rotunda et pulicum morsibus rectissime comparantur. Ne tamen pu lcum morsus pro petechiis habeantur, qua ratione differant videndum. In morsibus pulicum in medio tanquam punctum quoddam mor¬ sus vestigium inest, quodque compressione non delitescit, etiam reliquo rubore circumquoque evanescente. Peteehise vero, si c i gito comprimantur, evanescunt quidem sed redeunt, et nu um puncturse vestigium medio conspicitur. Prseterea peteehise m brachiis, cruribus, pectore, et copiosius ac frequentius m dorso ap¬ parent, non autern in facie.’1 Another valuable fact which we learn from the same author, is that the eruption in petechial evei was by no means limited to any particular day, but that very ge¬ nerally two distinct crops appeared, the former of which was ge¬ nerally looked on as symptomatic, the latter as critical, while m almost all cases the appearance of fresh spots after the seven \ * Opera. Parisiis, 1641. Tom. ii. De Febribus, Lib. iv. Cap. xm. p. 742.